Disturbia

FLICK A mildly successful thriller, Disturbia presents what would otherwise be a creepy Peeping Tom and positions him as the hero of the ‘hood. When we first see Kale (Shia LeBeouf) he is on a fishing trip with his father, in the big, beautiful openness of nature. Their bonding is literally turned on its head when the car Kale is driving flips over, leaving him the lone survivor of the accident. A year after the death of his father, Kale is clearly distraught. Sentenced to house arrest for popping a teacher in the head, he must wear an ankle bracelet that limits him to 100 feet from the house. Kale’s working mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) attempts to make the uninspired teen productive by taking away his Xbox and iPod privileges. Ever resourceful, Kale finds solace in voyeuristic activity by keeping binoculars handy and watching the comings and goings of people in the block. His favorite activity, ogling at sexy Ashley (Sarah Roemer), is disrupted as he’s tormented by the neighborhood kids (they love their flaming poo bags) and thinks he’s stumbled upon a possible serial killer in their midst. But are his suspicions real or just imagined? The title serves to represent not only Kale’s changing state of mind but also what lies underneath the suburban landscape where he lives.
LeBeouf is very likeable and his confident performance easily carries the movie. The attempts of director D.J. Caruso to pay homage to Hitchcock’s Rear Window lacks the suspenseful subtleties of that classic and, though making good use of camera phones, gets lost when updating the material to accommodate the teen target audience. The set-up is solid but there are no surprises as it eventually dissolves into predictaburia. My Score: 6.5 out of 10.