To outline, kid gets sentenced to a few months of house arrest. While under said arrest, he gets a little stir crazy and starts watching people in neighboring houses. While he people watches, he sees what he believes to be a murder. Now, this troublemaker needs to find a way to prove it without getting himself killed. Tell me if this begins to sound familiar.
Essentially, this boils down to Rear Window, the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller that starred Jimmy Stewart. It has been dressed down and rebuilt into a movie that is carefully structured for the modern teenage audience. Fortunately, despite the familiarity of its elements, they are pieced together in a sly manner that belies the intelligence and genuine creepiness that it contains. It successfully sidesteps the pitfalls of other pseudo-remakes of recent years by actually being interesting and containing worthy performances.
Disturbia plays on our innate voyeuristic tendencies, from those who like to people watch to those who get their kicks out of reality television and invasive tales of celebrities gone awry. Take away diversionary entertainment, the television, the video games, put them in a confined place, see how long it takes before they are peering out their windows straining to see what's going on in the home next door. It is the ability to create entertainment where there was nothing previously, not that it wasn't there, but it was blocked out by more in-your-face diversions.
Getting the festivities off to a roaring start is a peaceful father and son outing. Kale (Shia Lebeouf) is out fishing with his father, having one of those moments of connection between generations. As they head home, they are involved in a horrific car accident, one of the most cringe-inducing I have seen in some time. The timeline jumps forward, a year out from the accident, the now fatherless Kale is sullen and withdrawn and prone to getting himself in trouble. His latest outburst, punching a teacher, lands him the sentence of house arrest, and this is where the fun begins.
Disturbia is split into two distinct halves. The first half of the movie focuses on Kale and his attempts to deal with his situation. Mom, played by the underutilized Carrie-Anne Moss, cuts off the cable and his X-Box Live account, leaving him to try to find other ways to entertain himself. It doesn't take long before he notices the cute new neighbor girl, Ashley (Sarah Roemer); even quicker, he is spied by his target. This leads to the meet cute and romance begins to bloom. Before this gets too far, we overhear reports of a missing girl and a suspect in a 1960s-era Mustang. It just so happens that Mr. Turner (David Morse), the odd guy next door, has one. The watch is on and the second half of our tale kicks in.
Article comments
1 - courtney
omg. this is my favorite movie. i saw it in theaters the day it came out. it is awesome. i cant stop talking about it. i love how its not only scary. its funny and sad at the same time. and sometimes you have no idea whats going to happen. this movie is awesome. i talk about it everyday. i am getting it the day it comes out.