A remake of sorts that does no honor to its inspiration

Rating: 3/10 (17 October 2007)

When I rented this film I was not expecting to see "Rear Window." Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Alfred Hitchcock--we won't see their like again, nor should we expect to. "Disturbia" shares a superficial premise with "Rear Window," but that's as far as it goes. This is a "date movie," pure and simple. It introduces us to some less-than-admirable teenage snoops and a rather predictable serial murderer. This movie isn't about the voyeur in all of us or the isolation of urban life, it's about the production of something, in this case a film, made "to sell, and sell quickly," to quote Ezra Pound. It's about as memorable (and as nourishing) as a lunch I hastily gobbled down a week ago.
You know you're watching a bad movie when you focus on elements completely extraneous to the story. I was taken with the family's home--I recognized the architectural style but the name escaped me ("prairie"?) I also puzzled at Mr. Turner's basement: it didn't seem to go with the rest of his house. Do serial killers have these basements specially built for their ghoulish purposes?