Disturbia = 2007's Rear Window
Written: Apr 13 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Suspenseful, quirky, just plain fun to watch.
Cons: Doesn't do much for the privacy debate. Some inconsistencies.
The Bottom Line: Disturbia is a worthy 100 minutes of mindless entertainment for the WWW Generation. WWW = Watchers Watching Watchers.
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| flamepillar's Full Review: Disturbia |
As a huge fan of the Hitchcock classic Rear Window, a movie for which 1000 lifetimes of nothing but shouting of its awesomeness from the highest mountaintop still wouldn't be enough, I was more than a little stoked about Disturbia.
The premise is mostly the same. After a brief introduction that includes one of the most frightening car accidents I've seen in quite some time (and God knows there've been plenty of them in movies lately), the protagonist Kale (Shia LaBeouf) finds himself under house arrest. The reason is that he gave his Spanish teacher a black eye after what some might say is a mild "baiting" by the teacher who's flat out of options as to how to wake the poor kid up in class.
Anyway, so he's sitting in the house eating spoonfuls of peanut butter dipped in Hershey's Syrup, playing X-box live, watching the news, and doing anything he can to maintain contact with the outside world. But his mother (Carrie Anne-Moss) cuts off his internet, as well as the cord to the television. All that's left is his cell phone, and an interesting array of neighbors surrounding him.
The neighbors include a group of bratty 10-year old boys watching porn across the street, a creepy old guy who mows his lawn twice a day, and as luck would have it, a stunning blonde girl who just moved in next door. LaBeouf's character finds himself irrevocably drawn to watching them, much for the same reason that Jimmy Stewart's character did. There was literally nothing else to do. But what happens when one of the neighbors appears to have possibly committed a murder?
I found myself cracking up in the theater quite a bit. Just check out LaBeouf trying to do the laundry, or better yet, wait til his friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo) drops by. Yoo's character is the kind of character that I leave thinking the movie would not have been the same without him. Together, their interactions are very Harold & Kumar-esque.
I figured this was going to be some kind of "emo-thriller" (Are they making those yet?) yet it turned out to be something of a comedic teen-movie up until the last half hour, in which it turned into every other horror movie you've ever seen.
Sometimes the characters didn't seem to make sense. Conflicts would get brought up or resolved at totally wrong times. For instance, LaBeouf is spying on the girl (Sarah Roemer) early in the movie when it seems like she has seen him. Later, when she comes over to visit, you think it's to confront him and his friend about it. Instead, she joins them upstairs and goes at it spying with them. She doesn't actually confront him about it until later in the movie when he gets jealous 'cause he sees her down there getting copped by another guy. At times it's kind of ridiculous.
David Morse plays the role of the next-door neighbor who presumably is the murderer, definitely an unexpected role for the guy. He was the "gentle giant" guard in The Green Mile. The whole B-plot with him hitting on Carrie Anne-Moss is creepy and maybe a bit forced, as is his random encounter with the blonde girl. He's a lot more scary when he's not "just so happening" to be at a certain place.
The suspense was pretty riveting at times, that much is for sure. However there are times when I think they wait too long to answer a question, such as what happens to Yoo's character late in the movie. And as I said before, the last half hour is kind of a series of cliche's involving a tour of Morse's house that seems to go on for eons. The muddled, vague sound of someone trying to scream through duct tape is pretty scary though, as it gets gradually louder and louder and you're never entirely sure what it is until it's close.
Aside from something of a suspenseful soliloquy in the middle by Morse, there really isn't much to chew on here as far as debate on privacy goes. But I suppose the same could be said for Rear Window save a couple lines by Jimmy Stewart in the middle of that film. Seeing as how privacy has become a larger subject of debate in modern times, Disturbia would be a more pertinent movie if it had tacked on even two minutes or so just for characters to talk it out.
Tell you what, though, in spite of its flaws or its unharnessed potential, Disturbia was a fun movie to watch, and the premise... well, it's practically impossible to blow a premise like that. Yoo's character mentions a popular website at the very end, which left me chuckling all the way to the car.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Scary Movie
Viewing Method: Studio Screening/Premiere
Film Completeness: A few glitches, but mostly complete.
Worst Part of this Film: Pacing
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flamepillar
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