Modern day Hitchcock

Rating: 8/10 (26 October 2008)

Vertigo meets the 21st century.
In what is essentially a remake of Hitchcock's classic, a high school teenager (Shia LeBeouf) is sentenced to house arrest and has a tracking device placed on him, thereby making him unable to leave his home. After a while he starts spying on his neighbors, most notably a pretty young girl who moved in next door. But all is not well in suburbia as one of the neighbors is up to some pretty strange things. With the help of a classmate and his new found love interest, LeBeouf sets off to discover what is really going on.
As I have mentioned before, this is Vertigo in the 21st century- a man unable to leave his house thinks one of his neighbors is a murderer and then with the help of his friends, starts playing detective. Although casting someone like LeBeouf in the lead and including the whole teenage angle might make this seem like another run on the mill teen slasher, this is not it. The youth element is treated very effectively in the sense that it is there but it is not overplayed and is in fact kept to a relative minimum. There is some humor but the main focus is instead on the story and this is where the film's strength lies.
LeBeouf, despite his youth, is an excellent actor and I look forward to seeing him in more films. He manages to find that excellent balance between providing some comedic relief while at the same time still staying serious. DJ Caruso does a pretty good job of directing this film. There is of course quite a bit of modern style camera shaking and fast cutting (when compared to Hitchcock's version) but fortunately this too is kept in check and isn't overdone like it is in so many other films.
A nice film to keep you thrilled for an evening.