If you’re going to rip off someone, it might as well be Alfred Hitchcock.
Generation Y gets its own homage to “Rear Window” with “Disturbia,” which takes the story of the classic voyeur murder thriller and updates it with post-millennial teen angst and every modern tech gadget this side of a Best Buy.
Unfortunately, befitting the dumbed-down state of contemporary Hollywood studio fare, the otherwise competent director D.J. Caruso (known best for TV shows like FX’s “The Shield”) and screenwriters Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth can’t resist resorting to the kind of unnecessary gruesomeness and over-the-top climax twists that the masterful Hitchcock never needed to scare us silly.
Even worse, they’ve cast the blankest of blondes in the lead female role instead of any actress who comes close to filling the elegant shoes of the original’s inimitable goddess Grace Kelly.
On the plus side, Shia LaBeouf as the disgruntled protagonist Kale takes on the Jimmy Stewart role well. This effortless, approachable budding star from “Holes” and “Bobby” carries a similar quality to Stewart, an aw-shucks everyman who was nevertheless a dash more dashing and bit more witty than the average Joe.
While Stewart’s character was stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg gazing out at the back alley neighbors of his New York apartment to witness a murderer in “Rear Window,” LaBeouf’s Kale finds himself homebound for more delinquent reasons.
After losing his dad in a car accident that he survived, Kale punches out his Spanish teacher for rudely referencing the incident. That puts Kale under house arrest with an ankle bracelet that limits him from leaving his property. But after his Xbox and iTunes subscriptions are taken away by his mother (Carrie-Anne Moss), two of the neighbors he starts to watch out the windows for entertainment provide the bored but well-intentioned young felon plenty of excitement.
First, a leggy hottie named Ashley (played by the profoundly vapid Sarah Roemer) just happens to move in within ogling distance and will soon become Kale’s partner in crime fighting and his love interest. Then there’s the sinister Mr. Turner, played by the effectively frightening David Morse. Kale and his pals start observing clues indicating that this dude might be the key to the disappearance of some young women in the area.
“Disturbia” makes its ownmark with the “Rear Window”-inspired premise of a hero who is literally paralyzed from going forth to take action. By making it relevant to the experience of disaffected adolescents and the dark side of the suburbs, it might at least motivate some high schooler somewhere to rent the brilliant real McCoy.
‘Disturbia’
3/5 stars
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Carrie-Anne Moss
Director: D.J. Caruso
Rated PG-13 on appeal for sequences of terror and violence, and some sensuality.
