Teenage pulp version of Rear Window.

Rating: 3/10 (22 September 2007)

For some reason, Hitchcock's "Rear Window" is not listed in the "movie connections", which seems more than odd, given the fairly obvious parallels in the plots---even the Netflix sleeve identifies it as a "modern retelling" of RW. Respinning a tight masterpiece such as Hitchcock's original is a tall order, and even the best could be excused to not live quite up to it.
Alas, the best weren't involved in this dud, and "not living quite up" to the Hitch's standards really doesn't quite say it.
It starts with the "tightness" of the script and the setting. RW is claustrophobic, we get to see the world from the confined perspective of the protagonist, hardly ever leave the small room, see the rest of the world only from the titular window. By contrast, Disturbia starts in the great outdoors by establishing some father/son relation (only to crush it seconds later), and we roam the house and the neighborhood with that annoying kid and his useless friends. as for the script, where RW tells one story, this modern teenager turd throws in all kinds of target-audience compatible subplots and side stories, none of which contribute much to the main thrust.
SPOILER ALERT.
Then there are the characters---where RW had the socialite and the roaming photographer, Disturbia has a bunch of lame-brained teenagers. The protagonist's main problem is his need of a good parental spanking to aid his attitude adjustment. The next door hottie inexplicably falls for that numb nuts, and his friend is a completely useless and utterly unfunny individual. It's quite impossible to really care for these characters, and if the killer would not have murdered other people, you'd most likely side with him if he only makes these people go away.
END OF SPOILER.
But the worst, the WORST, part of this movie are the actors. All three teenage actors aren't great, but in ascending order of acting incompetence we have, at 3, Roemer, who is pretty but essentially not much else (and even on the pretty scale she is no Grace Kelly). LaBeouf, who is apparently groomed to be a modern version of the young John Cusack, comes in at 2---Cusack could act better even if he were drunk and in a coma. Whoever had the idea of giving this guy a leading role in a major production? At 1, though, the unrivaled Razzie champion of this movie, Aaron Yoo, who is the worst actor I have seen on screen in a while (and that includes Bill Pullman in Independence Day, as per a recent review). Boy, was he bad. There is not one appearance on the screen that does not make you cringe. He is a bad actor even if he just needs to stand around and do nothing. I kept hoping that he might get killed quickly, although now I am sure he would have been a bad act even as a corpse.
In summary, it's an ill-conceived approach to retelling/remaking/ripping off one of the best suspense pieces of all time, written by someone who could have written American Pie (but instead wrote Buffy, Xena, Tarzan, and Animorphs), and acted by incompetents (nods to Moss and Morse, who did what they could---better luck next time with picking a script, folks).
There must be something better that one can do with one's time. Watch Rear Window again, for instance.
"When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country's ready to let go."