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| The lurid poster for D. J. Caruso's Disturbia trades on its theme of voyeurism |
QUICK REVIEW:
Our young hero loses his father in a meaningless - and very mysterious - car accident. He then screws up and gets a house arrest sentence. He becomes obsessed with monitoring his suburban neighborhood, falls in love with the girl next door, - and sees the other neighbor commit murder!?!
Disturbia begins well, and Shia LaBeouf (Nymphomaniac (2013)) is very enthusiastic and well-playing, but the film is derailed by the innocuous teen romance, and it never manages to get our interest back. It mixes too many genres (teen romance/comedy/thriller) to shallow effect. It winds up with with an uninteresting thriller plot with David Morse (Drive Angry (2011)) as the suspicious neighbor, and it doesn't help that the climax plays out in almost complete darkness.
The obvious comparison with Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window (1954), which Disturbia is clearly influenced by, only helps it to look even more hapless and dull.
Carl Ellsworth (Red Dawn (2012)) and Christopher Landon (Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)) wrote the screenplay, and great Connecticut filmmaker D. J. Caruso (Eagle Eye (2008)) directed the film. Disturbia is, in short, Hollywood shite.
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In lieu of a trailer for the film, not currently on Youtube, here's an interview with LaBeouf about the movie
Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 117.8 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Disturbia was released April 13 and runs 105 minutes. The film is based on a script written in the 1990s. Steven Spielberg suggested LaBeouf. Filming took place in Whittier and Pasadena, California January - April 2006. Disturbia opened #1 in North America with a 22.2 mil. $ opening weekend, and it, amazingly, remained #1 for 3 consecutive weekends before being yanked down by Spider-Man 3. It grossed 80.2 mil. $ (68.1 % of the total gross) in North America, and the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were South Korea with 4 mil. $ (3.4 %) and Australia with 3.9 mil. $ (3.3 %). A lawsuit was filed in 2008 over a possible copyright clash with the 1942 short story which was the basis of Rear Window, but the claim was rejected. Disturbia is fresh at 69 % with a 6.2 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Disturbia?
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