Problems aside, the film is an effective and solid thriller

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2008)

Kale (Shia LaBeouf) is a troubled teen, and seems to not be learning any lessons. A provoked assault leads him to court, where he is sentenced to house arrest for three months, and is fitted with an ankle monitor ensuring he is not going anywhere. He slowly begins to grow bored, and eventually, begins to spy on his neighbours. While he begins to take a liking to Ashley (Sarah Roemer), the new girl next door, he begins to suspect another neighbour, Robert Turner (David Morse), may be a serial killer.
When I first saw the trailer, I immediately equated Disturbia together with Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (and all of the classic imitations and parodies that have come with it since its debut well over fifty years ago. And while it does follow some very familiar ground in its premise, Disturbia actually turned out to be much more than a simple re-imagining for the teenage crowd in the 2000's.
For one, Disturbia is more thrilling than you could imagine. Yes, it is highly predictable (although the opening ten minutes, if you know very little about the film, may come as a surprise), but that does not stop it from keeping you on alert for almost the entirety of the last third of the film. It does a lot of building up to certain moments, and when they hit, they hit rapidly and do not stop coming. It is suspenseful right to its core, and does not feel like it is trying too hard to be like so many other teenage thrillers. It is not particularly scary in most respects however (unless you are a bit too easily jumpy), but for what it sets out to accomplish, it does a very good job.
What may prove to be bothersome is the fact that the film takes a bit too long to build towards the actual spying Kale does after he begins to suspect Turner as a killer. He is not introduced as any character of importance until well into the film, and after he is, it takes another little while before he really begins to do anything for it. Instead, we have to endure through Kale slowly losing his sanity (and never once really using the Internet, despite it and the living room cable TV being the only thing his mother Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss) does not seem to take away) and almost stalking Ashley. I realize that they want to flesh out Kale as much as they can, but there is only so much that can be done before the film becomes overly tedious with its fleshing out. The creepy voyeur aspect to the film is a little weird to accept at times, but its merit as a social satire is quite intriguing nonetheless. And when Morse finally gets to chew up some screen time, the film does not want to let him, and almost forces him to continue to stay in the background.
And speaking of Moss's character, what purpose does she serve in any of this? She has a point in the ending, and she serves a point to take away Kale's X-Box Live and iTunes accounts (at least the product placement does not get nearly as bad as in Transformers), but does not do much else. Her character has basically no motivations, and when she gets a little bit of the emotional material in the film, you do not know whether it is worth feeling for her or just wishing they completely cut her out of the film entirely. Much the same goes for the annoying Jose Pablo Cantillo playing Officer Gutierrez, the police officer who always seems to be on hand if Kale steps out of his proximity zone. He gives the film a few laughs, but is pretty much useless in the grand scheme of things.
I do like what they tried to do with the story and the focus on Kale's character, but I think they could have tightened a bit further by losing some of his exposition and making Turner's a little more honed in (so when the inevitability of the predictable moments begin, there is more to him than the plainly obvious things). This is a movie with a very small cast of speaking roles, and they easily could have shifted things around and reworked certain moments in the film to be a lot more synthetic than others. As said previously, I was actually kind of surprised with how much better the film was than I ever would have assumed, so these gripes could have only made the film all the better than it already is.
LaBeouf does very well as the main character. He has a certain likability about him that makes us genuinely invested in what his character feels and does throughout the film, and he never once loses it. He makes the character very believable, and lends him a certain aura of authenticity. This is a character that LaBeouf could actually be like in real life, and it shows in how easy it seems for him to be acting within the role (and how he is not straining so hard like he does in Transfomers).
Morse, as always, does very well in his role. I do not want to spoil his most meaty scenes, but suffice to say, he is very kind and terrifyingly frightening all at once. He easily switches from emotion to emotion like someone is flicking a lightswitch, and much like LaBeouf, makes the role believable and real.
Roemer, Moss and Aaron Yoo as Kale's friend Ronnie all put in worthwhile performances that only further complement the work done by LaBeouf and Morse. Each (especially Moss) could have done with a little bit more exposition though.
As much as I hate to say it, I was rather impressed with Disturbia. It is an effective thriller with a few problems, but is otherwise quite a worthwhile watch.
7.5/10.