I based my decision to watch this film almost entirely off of what I saw on the DVD case. Shia LaBeof…creepy, menacing binoculars…I’m interested. Unfortunately for me, I was drawn in like a fly to a bug light because, contrary to what the front cover says, Disturbia is anything but “a scorching nail-biter that will have you jumping out of your seat”. Allow me to explain.

To begin with, the storyline is not exactly original. Kale, a teenage boy deeply affected by his father’s death, is put under house arrest after assaulting a teacher at school. With nothing else to do, Kale begins to routinely observe his neighborhood and soon witnesses some strange events occurring inside one man’s house that drags Kale and everyone he cares for into life-threatening danger (…Hitchcock’s Rear Window, anyone?). 

And when I say “drags”, I mean it. For being labeled as a thriller, Disturbia has very little thrill involved. The advancement of plot is so slow, I was about three fourths of the way through before anything frightening occurred, and even then it is very overdone and very unoriginal. The overall feel of the film ends up being more teen-flick-y than anything else. After a while, I found myself only half-caring about what happened to anyone in the end. Even if it wasn’t so closely related to Hitchcock’s film, I don’t feel like writer Christopher Landon or director D.J. Caruso did a proper job in making Disturbia stand out on its own.

The fact that Steven Spielberg had been an executive producer was a complete surprise for me. There are a few moments of amusement throughout that remind me a little of Spielberg’s humor, but besides that, this film really doesn’t feel connected with his expertise at all.

The original soundtracks also lacked a strong, unique quality and made me more annoyed than freaked out. Disturbia mostly uses the method of music shrieking when something pops surprisingly onto the screen, which works, but if it’s used too often on things that aren’t even scary (i.e. the character turning around and seeing their best friend instead of a murderer), it gets a little redundant and makes me question if the director really knows how to scare an audience.

I was generally disappointed in the acting as well. It wasn’t that it was bad, it just felt very generic and flat. I had seen good things from Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix trilogy) and had heard good things about David Morse (The Green Mile), but neither seemed especially electrifying in their Disturbia roles. It may have had something to do with the way the characters were written, but it just felt like the mother was a mother and the creepy man was a creepy man, nothing more.  

On the other hand, Shia LaBeouf (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) probably brought the most believablity to this film for me. It’s ironic, considering he use to make a living in teenage media as Louis Stevens on Disney Channel’s Even Stevens, but had I not watched that TV show, I would’ve never believed him to be the same actor. LaBeouf’s ability to conform so smoothly to a character is probably the reason why his career has come out of Disturbia unscathed. He is definitely an actor to keep an eye on.

To be honest, unless you’re a diehard LaBeouf fanatic, I would not recommend this movie. There really isn’t anything in it that we haven’t seen before. You’d be better off sticking with Rear Window and catching Transformers or Indiana Jones for your LaBeouf fix.