Disturbia

--Reviewed by Lindy Loo

Plotline: After punching his Spanish teacher in the mouth, our teenage lead finds himself stuck in his house for three months on house arrest. To cope with boredom, he starts spying on his neighbors, particularly (and of course) a super-hot neighbor who just moved in. When he notices one of his neighbors pulling a car into his garage that matches a car involved in a kidnapping, he begins to suspect him of murder.

Scariness factor: I've gotta admit, as teeny-boppery as this film was, it had good pacing and its tense moments were really quite tense.

Gross-Out Factor: Very minimal.



Complaints: This was uber-teeny-boppery. I'm not even sure whether to complain about that really, because it was clear from the get-go that this is the audience the movie was marketed towards. And you know what? I'm totally cool with that. (But yeah, if you're NOT a teeny-bopper, some of the style may grate on your nerves rather quickly. Particularly some of the annoyingly-emo music choices.) The acting is fairly generic. The characters are fairly generic. And, do not ask me why, but I have an inexplicable hatred of the dude who played the bad guy. (Though I will say, he wasn't too bad in this.) It was also a bit too pretty and squeaky-clean for my horror movie tastes.

High Points: Normally it irritates me when they modernize good classic suspense/horror films. Especially fricking Hitchcock of all people. (I mean, seriously--what WAS the deal with that Psycho remake??) BUT I actually think that, if you're gonna try modernizing a classic, Rear Window is actually a pretty smart choice. Thematically, the focus on voyeurism and paranoia is bumped up a notch in intensity and meaning when you factor in all the technological advances since the original film was made. I mean, you've got fricking KIDS with their own computers, cell phones, video cameras, etc. All this easy access to information, all this easy access to pinning things down on camera, all this easy access to posting whatever you want on-line, well, it kind of DOES lend to a scary voyeurism and paranoia. And in that regard, I think a remake of Rear Window was not too bad a choice. *HOWEVER* (and there's always a however), I'm conflicted about whether it could've been done tons better. I'm a fan of grittier, less slick horror films, and I wish this film would've had more of that kind of feel to it. *BUT* then again, the style of the movie was actually kind of fitting for the subject matter--sleek and shiny and pretty and modern and, well, teeny-bopperish. So yeah, I'm torn. The one other thing I liked about this movie was its pacing. I was surprised at how tense it left me. And it was pretty fast-moving throughout--it rarely dragged.



Overall: I'm torn. This isn't necessarily the type of movie to write home about (not that you would ANYWAYS, because who the hell writes home about movies??), but I must admit, I enjoyed it for what it was worth. 90 minutes of enjoyable, suspenseful fluff.

Grade: B-