Let's get one thing straight. To redo an Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, you need to possess the guts and skill worthy of such a task. The former is easy to come by in Hollywood. The latter, not so much. As a remake of Hitchcock's much parodied Rear Window, Disturbia is equally amateurish on both counts.
The basic storyline is the same. Man confined to his home entertains himself by peeping at his neighbors and their private lives, until one day, he sees one of them commit an atrocious crime. Everyone around him refuses to believe him, chalking his suspicions up to isolation-induced paranoia, which forces him to take matters into his own hands. Disturbia dunks this classic plot in the fountain of privileged-yet-troubled youth. Instead of Jimmy Stewart's broken leg due to journalistic bravado, Kale (whose similarly unfortunate real name, Shia LeBeouf, is also related to cuisine) is a suburban teenager under house arrest for a rather unheroic assault against one of his teachers. As an additional punishment (in case you were wondering what could be worse for a teenager than being stuck at home all summer long), his mother takes away his xbox and itunes, and literally cuts off his cable supply. All he has left now is a bedroom the size of my whole apartment and enough high-tech surveillance equipment to be in an unmarked van across the street. I think maybe there's a tear in my eye, but it's just from the stench of entitlement.
Further attempts to jazz up the movie for the young and the hormonal adds banal teenage conflict and unnecessary violence that are perfect for an adolescent audience, but painful for the rest of humanity. In typical teen-movie fashion, Kale notices the family moving in next door have a hot (of course) teen-aged daughter Ashley (Sarah Roemer), Disturbia's take on the Hitchcock Blonde. Kale and his doofus sidekick Ronnie (Aaron Yoo) watch Ashley like a couple of ten-year olds who just figured out how to access the blocked cable channels. Ashley herself spends her time doing yoga in a skimpy outfit with the blinds wide open, and swimming in the back yard in an even skimpier bikini. The trio's biggest problems (aside from the killer living one yard over) involve teen-age identity woes, house party drama, and feuds with the neighborhood preteens. There should be a rating for a film like this, pandering exclusively to the teen-angst set. Maybe something like DB-19 (Don't Bother if over the age of 19).
Aside from a few moments of anxiety, Disturbia is unimpressive in just about every way. Don't misunderstand me: the movie's plot is smooth (although that's mostly due to Hitchcock's material), and it has some well-timed tension, plus the requisite creepy soundtrack. Thankfully, this wasn't The Covenant. However, instead of the usual whirlwind of ideas warring in my head when leaving the theater, this time there was nothing. There wasn't even the residue of an entertaining scene or a noteworthy line. I had even forgotten the title. I had to look it up when I got home. It's as if director D. J. Caruso had used his movie to suck my synapses dry. Disturbia not only left me with no mental fodder, it also managed to remove all presence of itself in my brain.
The beauty of Hitchcock was that he was able to keep us on the edge of our seats without graphic depictions of violence, sex, or nudity. Sure, he toed the line a bit, but he was still shackled by the puritan production code that restricted all theatrical releases in those days, which is what made his skill so sharp. But today's desensitized youth demand their entertainment to be mindless and handed to them on a silver platter. This is one of the few places where Disturbia succeeds.
The worst feeling in every twenty-something's life is when she realizes she's not on the pulse of youth culture anymore. Sitting in the darkened theater watching Disturbia, that feeling overtook me. I felt closer to Kale's mom Julie (Carrie-Ann Moss, sans the leather jumpsuit and sunglasses) than any of the other characters, silently cheering when she cut her son's cable wire (you gotta teach them youngsters discipline!). My favorite part (according to my notes) was when Ashley used the word “gnarly,” mostly because it was slang that I recognized from my own totally awesome youth. The bottom line was I was too old to be watching this movie. If you're young, full of hormones, and like you're movies so easy to digest you need Immodium, you will most likely enjoy Disturbia. However, if you left the high school social sphere more than five years ago, DB.
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