I never want to see his face again.
Well, you see, it’s this way: “Disturbia” is a teen flick with a universal
theme, and that’s why the carnage, corpses, and carcasses of the last half hour
are perfectly capable of inducing an adult heart attack.
With great
skill and imagination, director D.J. Caruso sets up an opening scene that
creates in us instant love for a father and son only to lose one of them two
minutes later. He needed just two minutes to create a deep sense of personal
loss; that’s skill.
Jump ahead in
time to mother and son living in a typical suburb surrounded by houses, the kind
of place where families can have pride of ownership but not a moment’s privacy.
On this particular day a new family moves next door to Gil (Shia LaBeouf) and
his mother. The new neighbors include a blonde daughter, Ashley (Sarah Roemer)
who swims gracefully in the family pool under the close watch of Gil’s
binoculars. He has plenty of time to do this, you see, because he is under three
months of house arrest in an ankle bracelet for assaulting his Spanish teacher.
Gil spends
his time lounging in a state of slothful depression in the squalor of his
untended bedroom. Disgusted, Mom resigns as her son’s maid, cuts the cord of his
TV and tosses his Itunes. To lighten his darkness he spends the long empty days
ogling Ashley and hanging out with his feckless friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo) who
can be talked into doing almost any errand, good or bad, for his craftier buddy.
Remember the
movie’s tagline: “every killer lives next door to someone.” While this movie is
no threat to “Rear Window,” credit is due Sheila LaBeouf and Sarah Roemer who
build the suspense. La Beouf can be awkward, slovenly, sharp, or warm depending
on what the script calls for, and he has – what else can I call it – a lovely
expression in his smile.
As the trio
becomes suspicious of Mr. Turner (David Morse), a weird neighbor who makes many
things go thump in the night, they fiddle with all kinds of electronic
modifications to their gadgets in their search for discovery. And now:
escalation. The sound track periodically trumpets the onset of the villain,
leaving various audience members skewed in their seats trying to avoid having to
look at or listen to the latest shock up there on the screen. If you can’t hold
both your eyes and your ears closed at the same time, choose your ears because
the sound is even more frightening than the sight.
We care about
Gil. The other half of this battle? David Morse is a horrifically effective bad
guy. He sends danger flooding into the audience with the slightest flick of an
expression. He is a spectacular villain, the perfect opponent for our adolescent
hero. I never want to see his face again, even if he takes up romantic comedy.
He’s that good.
Copyright (c) Illusion