Movie Review : Disturbia (2007)
Watching movies hadn’t always been so easy. You either had to pay double a monthly Netflix subscription fee to own a physical copy of one movie or drive to a video store and rent them by the unit. It sounds to stupid in retrospect. That’s why so many movies with bad release timing or suspicious presentation ended up not being watched and polluting the bargain bin by the dozen. The I’m-not-ready-to-pay-four-dollars-to-own-it tiers of derivative crap. In 2020, your own boredom is the only currency that separates you from these vaguely intriguing, often ill advised viewings.
That’s how I ended up scratching a thirteen year itch and watching Disturbia. For the record, I don’t regret it at all.
Disturbia tells the story of Kale (the immortal Shia Labeouf), a teenager on three months house arrest after violently decking his Spanish teacher (Rene Rivera). The man deserved it, to be honest. He made fun of Kale’s recently deceased father. Bored out of his mind and deprived of his Xbox by his angry mother (Carrie-Anne Moss), Kale goes into ultra creep mode and starts snooping on his neighbors. That’s how he meets his hot new friend Ashley (Sarah Roemer) and his even creepier neighbor Mr. Turner (the equally immortal David Morse), who may or may not be a serial killer.
What we got here is basically a nu metal retelling of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, where James Stewart’s broken leg is replaced by a house arrest ankle bracelet. Raymond Burr’s dysfunctional husband character is also replaced by a sleazy-ass drifter type with a hoop earring played to perfection by David Morse. So, Disturbia operates with a somewhat foolproof formula. If you’ve seen Rear Window, you’ll get a kick out of the youthful energy and if you didn’t, you’ve got a pretty solid thriller in front of you. Everybody wins, especially its nu-metal director D.J Caruso.
So, Disturbia is… kind of good by design? It follows an already successful structure and adds overt details here and there like Mr. Turner’s kill cave, which I did not understand the geography of whatsoever. Was that thing UNDER his house? Why did he keep Kale’s mom with the rotting cadavers instead of the inexplicable surgical room? Was that room already in the house when he moved? Because he just arrived in the neighborhood Nothing about Mr. Turner makes sense, but it doesn’t matter. He’s like the habanero pepper on an otherwise bland-ass taco.
If he wasn’t there and wasn’t the expression of violence and terror itself, it wouldn’t work. Great antagonists are often dark, twisted versions of our hero and Mr. Turner is exactly that.
Why was Disturbia condemned to the bargain bin and largely forgotten today? Well, it had a great theater run and made 117 millions, which is almost six times its budget. Three things explain its brutal and semi-unfair fade out: 1) 2007 was one of the very best years in recent cinema history and it had to contend with monster hits in video stores. 2) Video stores themselves were starting to fade out and 3) Rihanna released an amazing fucking banger called Disturbia the following year and everybody suddenly forgot about the movie. That song is THAT fucking good.
There you have it. Disturbia is an entertaining movie. It’s not deep and it shamelessly borrows every trick that made Rear Window immortal, but it goes through the motion of it very well. A nu metal Rear Window is a very niche idea. One that didn’t survive the test of time very well. It would’ve been a more fondly remembered movie had it came out in 1998. But if you’re looking for that very experience of watching a distorted and oddly competent spin off a classic movie, Disturbia actually delivers just that. It’ll make you nostalgic of a simpler era in moviemaking.
6.8/10
