‘Disturbia’ has chilly moments

At the Movies
By Senitra Horbrook

Many teens may have trouble identifying with what life was like in 1954, when the Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window was released. Today’s youth may not have even heard of Alfred Hitchcock, the great film director whose long filmography includes classics like Vertigo, The Birds and Psycho.
Hitchcock’s style of suspense made for great storytelling, and Disturbia (opening quite appropriately on Friday the 13th) retells Rear Window, which starred James Stewart as a wheelchair-bound man who thinks his neighbor is a killer.
Disturbia is made for today’s teens, complete with integral usage of the iPod, iTunes and video games.
I like this genre, but I haven’t enjoyed a suspense movie geared to the teenage audience since Joy Ride came out a few years ago. Too many films are just preoccupied with killing as many people as possible in the most horrific ways.
Since it is rated PG-13, I didn’t expect Disturbia to be particularly gory or graphic; I was just hoping it wasn’t as boring as last year’s When A Stranger Calls.
Good news . . . I was entertained throughout.
High-tech voyeurism takes center stage in Disturbia, when troubled kid Kale (Shia LeBeouf) is sentenced by the court to house arrest for assaulting his teacher. After Kale’s mom Julie (Carrie Ann Moss) cancels his iTunes subscription, cuts the cord on his television and demands he find something meaningful to take up his time, Kale discovers the interesting world outside the windows of his home.
There is a new family moving in next door, with a pretty young daughter who doesn’t close her blinds while she’s changing clothes. In another house, there are some kids ordering the adult TV channels, and then there’s a husband who comes home during the day to have an affair with the maid when his wife leaves to play tennis.
He also sees a neighbor acting suspiciously after bringing a woman home from a night at the bar and dragging heavy trash bags out to his garage late at night. After seeing a news report about a serial killer from Texas, Kale becomes convinced that his creepy neighbor, Turner (David Morse), is the wanted killer.
Enlisting the help of his buddy, Ronnie (Aaron Yoo), and Ashley (Sarah Roemer), the pretty neighbor he managed to befriend even though she caught him watching her like a stalker, Kale is faced with the challenge of trying to stop the killer without leaving the confines of his home.
In a movie like this, the selection of the actor playing a villain is very important. The wrong villain could (figuratively) kill the movie. David Morse (who most recently had a recurring role on Fox’s House, as the cop trying to bring down Dr. House) is a great and convincing villain. He’s creepy, but he also knows how to be charming and talk his way out of a sticky situation.
LeBeouf (an Emmy winner a few years back for his role on Even Stevens on the Disney Channel) is good in the lead role. The movie does a good job of establishing his character in the opening scenes, when we see the event that causes Kale to become a troubled kid. LeBeouf is convincingly conflicted as the teen who’s sure his neighbor is up to no good but is unsure what to do about it. Yoo, meanwhile, provides some laughs as Kale’s friend Ronnie.
While I did enjoy the movie, I had a couple of nagging thoughts. This neighborhood needs to invest in some curtains or blinds. To me, that’s the definition of "disturbia." The thought of a teenage kid watching your every move through binoculars in his bedroom is almost as disturbing as the idea that a killer lives next door. ••
Movie Grade: B+