Decent - Nothing More Than Face Value Watching
At one point in "Disturbia", the hero's wiseacre sidekick shouts: "Operation Stupid is officially over!" Alas, his exclamation goes unheeded; for what begins as a serviceable, Gen-Y retooling of "Rear Window" (1954) - gets more overwrought and implausible as it goes along.
The film holds tenuous credibility filled with lower-leveled cheap scare attempts. Cribbing shamelessly, and none too skillfully, from the Hitchcock Classic; D.J. Caruso's thriller is formulaic schlock that's watchable only because of star Shia LaBeouf ("A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints"). A smart and scrappy presence, LaBeouf plays his role with a dramatic conviction and sense of urgency that's otherwise MIA from the mediocre "Disturbia".
Fresh from inflicting the dire "Blood and Chocolate" on us, screenwriter Christopher Landon collaborated with scribe Carl Ellsworth (the far more enjoyable "Red Eye") on "Disturbia", which transforms "Rear Window's" disabled photojournalist hero into Kale (LaBeouf), a high school student under house arrest for three months after assaulting his Spanish Teacher.
Grieving the tragic loss of his father in a car accident, Kale has become a moody, sullen teen facing likely jail time if he violates the terms of his arrest, which restricts his movements to a 100-foot perimeter of the house he shares with his mom, Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss).
Initially, Kale spends his days surfing the Internet or playing video games, but he soon turns to spying on his neighbors out of boredom. When not focused on the lissome figure of Ashley (Sarah Roemer), the beautiful next door neighbor, Kale trains his sights on the bizarre, nocturnal habits of the reclusive Mr. Turner (David Morse).
Eventually joined by Ashley and his buddy Ronnie (Aaron Yoo) in logging Mr. Turner's comings and goings, Kale fears that the quiet, middle-aged man with the tidy lawn may be a Serial Killer. The problem is, Kale has no hard evidence linking Turner to a string of murders - just his word, which doesn't mean much, given Kale's list of priors. So he drafts Ronnie and Ashley into helping him expose Turner before he claims another victim.
After a decent, if strictly by the numbers start, "Disturbia" goes the unfortunate route of jettisoning logic and character development to boost the tension.
By and large, the characters in "Disturbia" do all the dumb, reckless things we've come to expect — and mock — in cheesy suspense flicks. And whereas "Rear Window" is a marvel of tight plotting that builds to a nail-biter of a conclusion, Landon and Ellsworth's narrative ebbs and flows, with time out for gratuitous montage sequences, towards a wildly overblown climactic showdown between Kale and Turner in the latter's suburban chamber of horrors.
Directed in rote fashion by Caruso ("Taking Lives"), "Disturbia" does serve at least one purpose: it confirms that LaBeouf has the quirky charisma and talent to carry a film.
With so much potential set into a film, it's a torrid shame "Disturbia" didn't get jam-packed with the hyper-stylized fashions of todays nail-biters. High-Potential Resulting In Average Results; See This but expect nothing more than average - and a less-effective result than cinema's former master Alfred Hitchcock.Read full review
