Disturbia
Ah, so this is Shia Labeouf! I’d seen a few of his other movies but was still in the habit of saying “Who?” whenever his name was mentioned. One thing that certainly comes out of this is that I won’t be doing that anymore.
This is basically a shaky set-up to what amounts to another Rear Window rehash, Labeouf a teen acting out following the tragic death of his father who gets put under house arrest for “popping his Spanish teacher”, a neat little gizmo wrapped around his ankle to alert the cops in the event of his fleeing (introduced, incidentally, by a truly classic so-bad-its-good nothing-but-exposition scene, lol). There’s a creepy guy across the road (David Morse), a cute girl just moved in next door, and his best friend is just sort of … around.
I don’t know how necessary a lot of the stuff in the set-up is … I guess they needed their hero to have a rebellious streak to appeal to the teen market? Nothing much is made of the death of the guy’s father, and there’s not a great deal of evidence to suggest he’s changed or moved on a lot at the end. I’m also not sure I like how fast the girl next door and the best friend are brought in – my favourite part of the movie, had me laughing like few things have this year, is the montage of him “coping” in isolation. It really reminded me of the great old teen movies somehow, like Ferris Bueller etc, but with a thoroughly 21st century twist. The main plot, too, is completely pebbledashed in digital paraphernalia. One of the first things the girl next door does when she joins the voyeuristic threesome is put a custom ringtone on Labeouf’s phone and even customize his tracking device. When she later threatens to throw Labeouf’s iPod out of the range of the tracker, he proclaims, “okay, relax! That’s 60 gigabytes of my life right there!” Oh, and the last line is, “Soon to be the most popular video on YouTube,” as if we hadn’t got the message. All this is far less annoying than you’d think, though I do wonder how older technophobes might take it.
Ultimately, it’s about as good as I expected, but that’s kind of disappointing given the promise of its first hour, I really got convinced there that I might be watching one of the best movies of the year – it seems the story could go any which way, yet it takes about the most formulaic route possible. It’s still a more solid, fun and interesting thriller than most though.