The premise itself is brilliant in its simplicity: a victim of circumstance is confined to his home where in his boredom, he begins spying on his neighbors. One of those neighbors becomes the object of suspicion and dread when evidence begins to mount that he is a killer with the gruesome remains of a victim hidden on his property.

The original model for this scenario was Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, an elegant thriller starring some of the classiest actors in the history of the movies, James Stewart and Grace Kelly. Rear Window was a movie about adults for adults, and in this regard Disturbia suffers by the comparison.

Disturbia is to Rear Window what Cruel Intentions is to Dangerous Liaisons -- a lightweight teen flick patterned after an adult story.

Shia LaBeouf, who has become the heir-apparent for the roles John Cusack played in his youth, is Kale, a troubled teenager under house arrest.

Taking the part of the suspicious voyeur that was once played by Jimmy Stewart, LaBeouf is adequate to the task, though his acting displays the kind of restraint one would expect in a thinking rather than in a purely feeling actor. There are scenes in Disturbia that would have been far more effective if Kale's actions and emotions felt like they came from his gut, rather than being the surface affect of an actor going through the motions.

For better or worse, Disturbia uses much of its time establishing relationships with Kale's friends and neighbors and introducing a romantic interest in the person of Ashley, the new girl next door.

The flirtatious chemistry between the smitten but inexperienced Kale and the much more confident Ashley is one of the best things about the film. Indeed, it's the quiet, intimate moments between characters -- the warmth between father and son and the face-to-face confrontations with the calmly threatening killer that are the most emotionally effecting.

Unfortunately, the thrills and shocks that one would expect as the payoff for a film called Disturbia come as a series of very familiar, even hackneyed scenes the likes of which have been fodder for parody for at least ten years.

The truly unforgettable scenes in film are when our expectations are surpassed, when a moment we know will be scary is suddenly even more shocking, when an image of horror or suspense is so unique that it becomes unforgettable. The film Taking Lives by Disturbia's director D.J. Caruso did have an unforgettable scene in its satisfying climax. There are no such moments in Disturbia, and as a result the overall effect of the film is tepid, with a sense of opportunities missed for the sake of appealing to a young audience.

The disappointment of Disturbia is that it's not very disturbing at all.


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