"Disturbia" (2007) - Movie Review

There is a beauty in giving a clichéd expected series of frames interesting enough. There is a terrible mistake if the audience started predicting who is and not going to come out of the door in a thriller movie. In all the frames wherein the main character Kale (Shia LaBeouf) opens the door of his home, one thing is sure that the one he expects will not be there. And every one knows it. Which makes it, what do they say as “boringly predictable”.

Teenage kid Kale is still not able to get out of the tragic accident which resulted in his father’s death out of his mind, even though the character does not show any kind of depressed condition. He causes trouble in his school by punching his teacher who brought his memories of father in a bad way. He is been put to house arrest with a beeper which informs the cops if he goes out of the border of his yard. He enjoys it like a vacation and also spies on his entire neighbour. Enters Ashley (Sarah Roemer) who moves next to Kale and expected, he falls for her. The dumbest dialogue happens as the “supposedly” romantic lines he passes to her when she questions his stupid “ruining her party” act. And yes, before I forget, Kale also suspects one of his neighbours Mr. Turner (David Morse) to be a serial killer. When this point comes it is already one hour and thirty minutes.

The trend of “no one believes” the guy who sees the real thing does not work here. The film tries to bring in all the element of entertainment but they do everything in the worst way possible. The screenplay goes aimlessly on what to concentrate. Kale looks very ordinary and fine. He does show moments of tragic in his face whenever he enters his dead father’s room. There need not be any kind of extreme emotional stress in his face, but there are no evidence shown of inability to handle the situation. He manages only to punch his Spanish teacher since he asked a reasonable question. If he is suffering from domestic handling of situation, why do they need to put him in solitude? Does not he want some one to talk out his inner depression and unnecessary guilt? Well, it would have been tough if a reasonable judge did that and shot the dreams of this movie project.

Ashley is another unexplained character introduced so that Kale can deviously spy on her. Also it adds the “glamour” factor to this partial teen movie. As expected, she has her father and mother not “caring” enough or whatever she supposedly says to Kale to spend some time spying along with him. And the most confusing character is Mr. Turner who is very reasonable at every point of time. I was surprised that the movie made me to feel that way because it might be surprising when the truth comes out. But interestingly I never felt any kind of surprise at all. In fact, director D.J. Caruso believed that making the audience doubt Kale would be interesting, but the movie side tracks the main plot (the plot trailer shows which is the serial killing neighbour), I started hoping the movie to end soon. As the end slowly started to come, I was hoping to get a base ball bat myself and beat the crap out of Kale and get this over with.

If Mr. Turner is shown as a smooth operator, he is a bad serial killer. Oops, did I just say that? Sorry, but I guess I spare most of the audience the pain of wasting nearly 104 minutes. Anyways, let me see why he is a bad serial killer. First, living in a very closely packed neighbour hood wherein a teenage kid can easily spot him taking someone and making dolls out of them. Also chasing Kale in the middle of the street with a knife in his hand. His character is micro thin.

There was not even a single moment in the movie which I can pin point to say that this movie is worth watching for it. It becomes an ordeal to sit through the movie. Finally, to conclude, since I do not want to sound harsh, I choose my words carefully to summarize the movie, “This Movie Sucks”.