Review of Disturbia (2007) by Markb. — 17 Apr 2007

In David Mamet's recent, witty examination of what's right and (mostly) wrong with Hollywood, Bambi vs. Godzilla, the famous playwright/ screenwriter/ director describes a certain type of movie that's best enjoyed by entering the theater 15 minutes late.

If not for the truly spectacular, scary and imaginatively shot car crash that sets the events in motion, Disturbia would fit Mamet's bill perfectly. The movie needs to have its high school hero Kale (Shia LaBeouf) placed under three month house arrest, wearing one of those ankle devices that confines him to home and yard, but the circumstances contrived by screenwriters Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth (and "contrived" is EXACTLY the right word) are so obviously and unbelievably designed to make Kale's crime as understandable as possible that Landon and Ellsworth don't just rupture themselves devising them--they all but send themselves to the emergency ward! (Since in the course of the movie our hero is going to become more sympathetic anyway as he endeavors to finger a neighbor who might be a serial killer, what's wrong with the script getting him incarcerated within his home by having him commit a truly criminal, indefensible act--so that his reformation really counts for something?) While we're at it, let's lop off the LAST 15 minutes, too--an uninspired, derivative trip through boogety-boogety land that requires the heretofore intelligent villain (David Morse) to suddenly behave in a completely illogical manner after it's been made obvious that up to this point he was holding all the winning cards.

What's in between Disturbia's highly dodgy beginning and end, however, is a pretty terrific hour or so of entertainment...but not for the reasons the filmmakers apparently think. Once you get past the contrivance of Kale's mom (Carrie-Anne Moss) being out of the house at highly irregular times for sheer plot convenience (until she becomes a third-act chess piece, she might just as well be one of those trombone-voiced offscreen adults in the Peanuts TV specials), Disturbia becomes a very solid little vest-pocket character study with Kale growing in responsibility and finding his place in the world even though he's been geographically restricted to a very, very small part of it.

LaBeouf, who was so impressive in Holes as a kid in not just a pickle but a whole vat of them, is equally excellent here, and is matched by Sarah Roemer, an offbeat beauty who plays the girl next door that Kale probably wouldn't have gathered the confidence to talk to had he not been confined.

While piecing together clues, they don't just form a tentative romance...they build a friendship, and Disturbia's most effective suspense involves not knives or body parts but the question of whether Roemer's chic but slightly insecure Ashley will conform to what's socially expected of her or step outside the box.

The main interior set is visually impressive and complex (Kale never does quite manage to clean his room!) and the sound effects work is truly extraordinary: the high echo blend of fire engines, cats, dogs, traffic, faint music and other sounds of summer at night is simultaneously evocative and creepy.

Too bad the movie's technical excellence and the winning performances of LaBeouf and Roemer (whose conversations are so natural they not only seem partly improvised but add to the movie's subtext of electronic invasion by giving us the impression that we're spying on something private and intimate) go for absolutely naught because Disturbia feels bound to adhere to its genre: what plays for awhile as a sort of millennial, home-school update of The Breakfast Club ends up coming off as not much more than the latest installment of Friday the 13th Part-Whatever-The-Hell-They're-Up-To-By-Now.