Disturbia

Review by Clint Morris

Amnesia doesn’t sound really appealing, I know, but get this – if you’re a movie fan, you actually get to experience all the greats over and over again. Can it be all that bad? Imagine watching Back to the Future, The Godfather or Star Wars for – what you believe – is ‘the very first time’!

And how the studios would love you! You’d be none-the-wiser that the film you’ve just watched is a direct rip-off of something else that came out twelve months before, and probably wouldn’t even consider blasting the filmmakers on a forum somewhere.

What film buffs wouldn’t give to be hooked up to the memory-erasing epidural for a couple of hours.

If such a drug could be pumped through the body, it’d be best injected before watching say something like Disturbia – the new teen thriller starring Shia LaBeouf. From simply reading the premise alone – all three lines of it – it’s quite evident that someone’s stolen the blueprint to Rear Window (and the umpteenth knock-off's that have been produced over the years; including a recent remake of the same film) and simply cut and pasted its libretto into a nice fresh word document. Cunning and creative film making at its best, ladies and gents.

So the question remains: It looks new; smells new; has some new touches – but does it play new?

Well...Yes, it does – in the same way many mistake a cover song for an original. You see, although it is merely a stitch-pattern of sequences from other films (everything from Home Alone to Rear Window, The Bedroom Window and, even, Stakeout) the script has been so funked up – in that it speaks to it's audience, seemingly knowing exactly what they’d be after – that the contemporised retool is instantly likable. It’s also genuinely thrilling at times – and considering there’s two or three teen thrillers released each month that don’t encompass one legitimate scare, that’s saying something. 

The cleverness that Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth’s script embodies is refreshing – they’ve written a fun movie, one that delivers on most of its promises. It’s definitely one of the best teenage thrillers to come along in quite some time.

The film fixes on a messed-up kid (he lost his dad (Matt Craven) in a car accident a year before) who decides to “pop” his Spanish teacher one in the nose. That little incident lands him under ‘House Arrest' (a form of at-home imprisonment where an electronic device, belted to the kids ankle, goes off should he leave the vicinity of his home).

After Kale (LaBeouf) has had enough with watching TV; eating junk and making a ‘castle of twinkies’, he decides to do some spying – through his window – at the neighbours. The person that gets the majority of peeps is Ashley (Sarah Reomer), the bikini-clad babe who lives next door. At the same time, he’s also watching the neighbour on the other side (David Morse) a man who looks – and acts – suspiciously like the murderer they’re talking about on TV.

Rising star Shia LaBeouf (soon to be seen in Transformers and after that Indiana Jones 4) again proves himself one of the most likeably young actors in cinema at the moment – and an adaptable one at that. Even when the films at its most implausible (which is quite often) – he sells the thing. You believe he is actually experiencing joy, terror, sadness and love – respectively – when we reach those beats in the movie. In many ways, he makes the movie.

D.J Caruso’s direction is also effective – from the terrifying car crash at the films beginning to the effective pacing of the plot, he seems to have found a genre he can handle (he hasn’t done so well elsewhere). Considering his last effort Two for the Money – a sports comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Al Pacino – was a bit splotchy, he has come a long way.

Yes it’s full of plot holes. Yes it’s hokey. Yes David Morse’s bad guy is rather unequivocal – but considering teenagers don’t pick apart films like a critic, they’ll think Disturbia is heaven in a ticket stub.

3.5 out of 5

300
Australian release: 12th April, 2007
Cast: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Regan, Dominic West
Director: D.J Caruso
Website: Click here.