Skip to main content

Disturbia (2007)

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Disturbia. Feature film. (2007, 105 mins) IMDB

...it could have been far worse...

I

t's not officially a remake but it is. This is modern take on REAR WINDOW. Instead of a photographer (Jimmy Steward) locked up in his apartment in NYC because of a broken leg, this film has a teenaged boy under house arrest with an ankle alarm. If he leaves the property, an alarm goes off and the police come right away and they do.

In the opening sequence he drives the family car on a highway. His father is in the passenger seat. Out of nowhere, the car collides with another and another. The father is dead. The son is quilt ridden.

The three months of house arrest (punishment for something that happened a year later) coincides with the summer months away from school. But his mother cuts the cable, internet, video games. With nothing to do, he becomes a voyeur and there's plenty of things to watch from his bedroom. Note: the family lives in a one-off spacious home as designed by Hollywood. Note: there is far more activity seen from his window than would be realistic. That's Hollywood and filmmaking.

He has a school friend who visits from time to time.

Then there's a new neighbour--a young, sexy woman his age. Of course she had to be the thin, blonde instead of a chubby bookworm with glasses. He loves to watch her undress and so do the kids in the theatre watching.

And there's the other neighbour (David Morse). He's a serial killer except our hero can't prove it and no one believes him.

The film leads to a point where there is a drag-out-to-the-death fight between the serial killer and this sixteen year old boy.

The film is surprisingly effective even if we know the outcome. In the end he is vindicated and he kills the killer. The hidden recesses of the neighbour's house looks like an anatomy theatre. The cops eventually come. His mother is saved, his girlfriend is saved, his best friend wasn't killed.

Still it is a teenager being a teenager and plenty of Hollywood non-sense. A film for teenagers, but it could have been so much worse.

Posted 2009/06/03 at 20h05ET in Movie Commentary.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read
2 comments
Read more

Days 9-108: Writing a Novel—The Deep Blue Hold

November 25th, 2016 to March 5, 2017 Note: Unedited writings from my notebook for this novel. Square bracket items represent added comments. At 15:53 Office ... And so began a three month odyssey away from writing this novel, The Deep Blue Hold. ... W herein I try to explain why I stopped working on this novel. The shortest answer is I gave up. The short explanation is I struggle with mental health issues (MDD, GAD, PTSD) that paralyse me at times. When it happens, I’m not able to do much of anything. Don’t want to do anything and that includes things one might expect to enjoy. For a while I spent time trying to create some thirty-second videos that would play a word puzzle like a crossword. Here’s the clue. Here’s the blank spaces. And after an interval, one of the letters would appear until all the letters appear. A bit of a crossword puzzle in that sometimes you come to a word where crossover words give you certain letters and you have to fill in the rest. A
Post a Comment
Read more

Words: BONE—GONE—LOAN—BOAN

Friday, March 31, 2017 You’d think BONE would rhyme with GONE but no. This is the English language after all. But BONE does rhyme with LOAN so we’ll spell it BOAN. It will take some time to update all the existing writings but it can be done. Meanwhile, if you smash up your car, the insurance company will allow you to get a LOANER and if you happen to meet the right person you may get a BOANER. boan Post comments on facebook page Posted 2017/03/31 at 17h28ET in Words .
Post a Comment
Read more