11/13/07

Disturbia

So what does it take for a movie to earn over $200 million? John Hughes used to do teeny bopper movies, usually starring Brat Packers or Molly Ringwald, and even with them, it would be tough.

This year, they took a young fellow who had done some television work, plus a Disney movie ("Holes"), a couple of ensemble pieces ("Bobby" and "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints"), a huge "blowie uppie" spectacular ("Transformers") and put him in this whiz-bang movie that is a combination horny-teenager comedy, genuine suspense and flat-out horror. Shia LaBeouf threatens to be the juvenile lead du jour these days. He will be in the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie and has a couple more already in the can.

Despite his incident at WalMart in November, 2007, I am still hoping he can keep his nose clean and come out the other end a professional actor instead of a has-been by age 25 (he's 21 now).

"Disturbia" opens with an idyllic scene of him fishing with his father. On the drive home, they have a horrific accident and his father dies. When we pick up the story a year later, he is acting out in school, trouble at home and generally a miserable pain in the neck for his mother, played by Carrie Anne Moss ("The Matrix" and "Memento"). Under the circumstances, neither the school nor the judge wants to incarcerate him, so he is fitted with an ankle monitor and sentenced to three months home supervision.

His mother quickly sees that cable TV, electronic games and wireless devices all make his sentence a farce, so she cuts him off from everything so he will actually experience some punishment.

As a consequence, his boredom converts him into a voyeur, monitoring the comings and goings of all his neighbors, both by actual sight and using binoculars. Naturally, he watches his delectable teenage neighbor in her bedroom, he sees the pre-pubescent boys next door visiting porn sites while their mother sits, oblivious, elsewhere in the house, and wonders about a mature single fellow who keeps his yard immaculately mowed and seems to date occasionally.

There have been reports of a serial killer in the city and a Mustang car was identified as somehow involved. Yup, you guessed it, that single fellow...

Suffice it to say, plenty of the scenes are nail-biters, lots of the dialog is excellent and there really IS a classic "Don't-Go-In-The-Basement" scene.

It's too late to add to the ticket sales, but the DVD rentals are still accruing, so if you want to have the pee-waddling damn scared out of you, rent the DVD and turn down the lights.