After watching the trailer you may look at Disturbia as an attempt to redo Rear Window, and you wouldn’t be too far off. However, Disturbia fails on every level that Rear Window succeeds. I have grown increasingly tired of watching teen kids in roles that are too big for them, primarily because it weighs the movie down with so much teen angst and scenarios that it removes all credibility from the film.
Disturbia centers on Kale played by new it-boy Shia LaBeouf. Kale is on house arrest for his summer break and has taken to enjoying the neighborhood goings on as he stares out his many windows. Luckily for this young teen the new next door neighbor turns out to be cutie Sarah Roemer playing the part of Ashley. However, all neighbors aren’t little hotties in bikinis, some happen to be serial killers! Oh no! Serial killer? What should we do? Spy on him is the answer!
So, Kale, Ashley and Kale’s idiot friend Ronnie take to breaking into said neighbor’s house, snooping around, getting into trouble and so on and so on. There are no scares, frights, chills, thrills or anything that will make your heart skip a beat in the first 80 minutes of this 104 minute feature. Fortunately for those of you that sit through the whole thing the last 15 minutes or so does bring a bit of tension, but none of it makes up for the boredom that will be suffered watching the first 75-percent of this film.
This is the second failure in a row for director D.J. Caruso who last directed the horrible Two for the Money and wasn’t exactly praised for Taking Lives back in 2004. Somehow this guy has directed the likes of Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke and Al Pacino but he just can’t seem to put together a good film.
As for the actors they all play their parts just fine. LaBeouf and Roemer are just fine; you couldn’t expect anything more from what they were given. Carrie Anne Moss (Trinity from The Matrix) has a rather small role as Kale’s mother and David Morse plays the part of next door neighbor and serial killer. Morse is actually pretty good and had he been given a better script to work with and maybe one or two early and genuine scares this film might have actually worked. Unfortunately it gives way to the cliche teen moments far too often and forgets that it is supposed to be a thriller, not a young teen love story with thrill-style elements.
