Theatrical Review of Disturbia

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"Disturbia" has been compared to one of the great suspense films of all time, Alfred Hitchcock´s "Rear Window." Both deal with a confined character spying on neighbors and a romantic interest being involved. However, where "Rear Window" decided to confine Jimmy Stewart´s L. B. Jefferies to a wheelchair in his apartment for the duration of the film, "Disturbia" allows it´s young protagonist Kale (Shia LaBeouf) wander around relatively unteathered…unless we count the electronic bracelet attached to his ankle.

After being in a horrific car crash and watching his father die in front of him, Kale withdraws into himself. He isn´t concerned with school, so much so that when a Spanish teacher uses his father in a reprimand, Kale hits the teacher in the face. Because of his outburst, the boy is sentenced to three months house arrest. If he ventures beyond a certain electronic perimeter, he has ten seconds before the cops are called. After his mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) disconnects his television, X Box Live and iTunes subscription, he starts to watch his neighbors. The school age kids watching porn, his new neighbor-girl (Sarah Roemer) and a man who enjoys his privacy (David Morse). Is what Kale sees through his binoculars his imagination…or something worse?

I´ll be perfectly up front about this: I have loved "Rear Window" since the first time I watched it in film class. A charismatic and immensely likable leading man in Stewart, the beautiful Grace Kelly and a fantastic plot that stayed true to itself through the film. When the first trailers for "Disturbia" came out, I pegged it as a "Rear Window" clone. On that note, I wasn´t wild about the film. How could you remake one of the best thrillers of all time? Let alone with the kid from a Disney Channel TV show? "Disturbia" does have its share of problems but the best thing the movie has in its favor is that it doesn´t try to be "Rear Window." It´s not a remake or a re-imagining; "Disturbia" wants to be its own movie from start to finish, though finds itself hampered by comparisons to the Hitchcock classic.

The first half hour of the film is set up in the grand thriller tradition. Kale, and the audience, are taught the places he can´t go and he even learns the consequences of leaving his house with a visit from the cops. Remember this because it is as crucial for the audience to take note of this scene as it is for Kale. More than that, though, it lures us into a false sense of security. After all, the home is supposed to be the safest place in the world; if a kid isn´t safe there, where can he go?

One of the problems with the film is a bit perplexing, especially in our technological age. If Julie, Kale´s mother, has blocked his X Box Live account as well as access to iTunes, wouldn´t it also stand to reason she´s turned off his internet access? At first it seems like a plot hole, but consider the following: the electronic monitoring device runs through the home phone line. If-and this is a big if-Kale´s computer is running on dial-up service, then the phone line can´t be disconnected. It´s admittedly a small piece of a large puzzle, but in a genre where everything should add up in the end, this is one piece that doesn´t.

Add into this the audacity of the teacher who is sets the whole movie in motion. It has to be common knowledge Kale and his father were close, let alone what led to the elder man´s death. Witnessing something like that would leave permanent emotional scars on any person, even "one year later" as the subtitle tells us. So why does Mr. Gutierrez feel it is at all appropriate to tell Kale his father would be disappointed to see what his son has become…in a class full of students, no less? And why does he apparently get away with this? He is as much to fault as Kale is. Furthermore, it is a conflict of interest (as mentioned in the film) that Gutierrez´s cousin-a cop-has asked to be the first person called if Kale leaves his house. Any cop, dispatcher or judge knows this. Why don´t the adults in this film? Again, both this nitpicks sound very small and basically meaningless in the context of the film; they gnawed at me through the picture.

The two-hour running time of "Disturbia" tends to drag around the middle. At one point during a garage invasion, I was silently hoping the cops would find what Kale believed was there and the movie would finish. However, it kept going. Thankfully, the end of the film picks up-though it does abandon it´s thriller "Rear Window" roots. Whereas the climax of the Hitchcock film is all thriller (no real violence), the ending of "Disturbia" is pure violence. Running, chasing, weapons, yelling… In many ways the violence is on par with last week´s new thriller "Vacancy." And that´s where "Disturbia" lost me as a viewer. It falls into standard, generic movie of the week formula when it could have done something more, something better. Part of the charm of "Rear Window" was watching Jefferies WATCH Lisa (Kelly) in another apartment building and not being able to help her.

Here, even though Kale can´t technically leave his property, he CAN leave. He´s not bound to a wheelchair or committed to bed rest. He is an active participant in the climax as opposed to an onlooker like the audience. Which is too bad, really, since the technological innovations Kale uses (a video camera and cell phone) to monitor a friend inside Turner´s house allow him to be a passive participant. Having Kale unable to get out of bed would have made for a different and potentially more gripping story.

I´m not sure what I think about the acting out of the young leads. Yes, they are more than capable of holding down the acting duties the script gives them and they do act like typical teenage kids. But I don´t buy for a minute Kale being depressed over his father´s death a year ago in one scene and then moving on to basically stalking neighbor Ashley in the next breath. Are his emotional problems, which stem from his father´s death, a ruse? Are we supposed to accept his depression comes and goes? LaBeouf isn´t given much to work with in terms of the script; his emotions range from surprise to his stalker-y personae (ie. not much of a range) It´s not his fault. It comes from the script.

Moss and Morse as the principal adult leads perform better than LaBeouf, which is hardly surprising. Moss, as Kale´s harried mother, looks the part more than anything, which helps to sell the audience on the ringer her son puts her through. Morse also looks his part and exudes creepiness in every scene. He never loses control or raises his voice. Even in the climax, Turner always seems in control, especially when he is not. Moss and Morse help to calm LaBeouf down and give him someone mature enough to play off of. (His two contemporaries, Roemer and Aaron Yoo as Ronnie, are bland and over the top, respectively.)

"Disturbia," on the scale of 1 to 10, rates a very marginal 6. It´s not a remake, yet it feels like a story we´ve seen before . . . and better. LaBeouf shows he can pull off one kind of character here (the teenager); I´d be interested to see if he can also do the action star in this summers "Transformers" movie. This movie is going to be compared for many years with "Rear Window." And any film in that comparison is going to come out on the short end of the stick.

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