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Disturbia
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: April 15, 2007

If you are not suffering from serial-killer-fatigue, and if you are capable of forgiving a blatant knock-off of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, then you could do worse than to sit through the new teen thriller Disturbia. This film is capably assembled and well acted; I found myself engaged throughout, rooting for the good guys, et cetera. But after it was over I found myself wanting to advise this film’s teen audience that they’d just been hoodwinked, and not because the movie borrows its premise from a Hitchcock masterpiece, but because the “troubled teen” hero of Disturbia is about as angst-ridden as Ferris Bueller.

No fault of the film’s star, Shia LeBeouf, whose strong acting and considerable charisma carried this movie despite few supporting characters and even fewer locations. LeBeouf plays Kale, a teenager who loses his father in a car accident and develops some anger management issues that land him under house arrest. Confined to home by an ankle bracelet, Kale is subsequently deprived, by his mom, of his X-box and iTunes subscriptions, and since he apparently doesn’t want to play his $2500 Gibson Les Paul guitar, he takes to spying on the neighbors for entertainment. Fortunately the girl next door has blonde hair, a perfect body, and a fairly consistent schedule of swimming in her bikini and doing yoga with the blinds open. Not so fortunately (but perhaps inevitably, since the universe must balance every blessing with a challenge of equal value) the other next door neighbor is a serial killer who stashes corpses in his house, and is so mentally un-balanced he doesn’t twitch under any amount of pressure.

The movie gets off to a strong start. LeBeouf brings an authentic wounded and angry quality to his character that helps build emotional momentum for the proceedings that follow. On the other hand, considering what follows, the performance is not only wasted but somewhat betrayed, as it becomes clear that the filmmakers are not interested in Kale’s problems, or in the subjects of grief, or healing. In fact the tragedy that begins the story, despite LeBeouf’s best efforts, becomes nothing more than a badge this film slaps onto its hero to convince us he’s an outcast.    

It gets worse. Kale has a sidekick, a clownish Korean boy named Ronnie, who is afflicted with a strange combination of too much personality and no personality whatsoever. Ronnie gets kicked out of the room when the white kids want to make out, and later on is happily tasked, by Kale, into harm’s way. Yes, the suburbs are indeed disturbing.

Meanwhile, Kale’s girlfriend, Ashley, is even less substantial. Other than a dramatic awareness of her own desirability, and a generic teen glibness toward adult concerns, she is not endowed, as it were, with much personality. Nevertheless, Kale accuses her of “conforming” when she wants to throw a party, and later he convinces her she is some kind of diamond in the rough, because she eats pizza-flavored chips, and because she reads. “And not magazines,” her tells her, “but books.” Are we to admire him now, for getting himself laid with a model? Or are we to believe he feels an emotional connection toward this dull and self-adoring beauty? Either way, he’s out of the sensitive teen club.

Disturbia is a well-made and suspenseful viewing experience, but, like its title, it does not hold up to even casual ponderings. I wonder if teen audiences primarily respond with envy toward this film’s hero, with his good looks, his mournful eyes, his justified anger, his hot neighbor, his mostly absent mom, and his prolonged isolation in a house full of every technological gizmo known to man, all of which, miraculously, function properly. To this film’s youthful audience, I say: Don’t resent Kale. Resent the filmmakers. They’re kidding, right? Being a kid is a lot harder than this, even without a serial killer living next door.

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld