Hitchcock For A New Generation

Disturbia is in ways like a flashback to the 1980’s, during that period a series of teen horror or thriller movies bought adult genre’s to a younger audience. Prime examples of this were The Lost Boys and Fright Night, both had a sort of cult mentality about them and the kids loved them. Turn the clock back three to four months and in America Disturbia had much the same effect, a new generation of cinema viewer gets a bit of teen mush wrapped in the basis of a thriller. Disturbia quite literally rocked the US movie charts and I have a suspicion that from the 9th September UK cinemas will be doing the same thing.

Disturbia is very much a remake of Rear Window for the new Millennia, it has of course been given some very modern elements and products to bring it up to date, but anyone denying a similarity between the two movies is a liar. The format is obviously very different in Rear Window James Stewart or Christopher Reeve depending on the version were trapped in a wheelchair, here Kale has one of those security anklets, once he ventures 100 metres from the base unit, the anklet activates and the police turn up.

My reason to criticise Disturbia if it is criticism, is that while it offers a teen audience so much, for an older audience it gives them nothing new to get their teeth in; accept perhaps a bit of new technology. The first 30 minutes of the movie lacked little substance at all for an older viewer, we get to meet Kale and understand the family tragedy; but then it spirals into a kind of “what would a teen do home alone” kind of scenario. At the 30 minute mark having seen Ashley the girl next door, a kind of will they wont they relationship develops and at the 45 minute mark the thriller element kicks in, and its un-relentless. Until that 45 minute mark it was very much like watching a teen TV show on a Sunday afternoon; but I guess this is the movies draw to the film.
In the first few minutes of the film Kales father teaches him about the lure of fishing; and I guess this could in fact be a metaphor for the movie itself.

Shia LaBeouf (Transformers) leads the well acted cast, who all are faces you recognise but nobody you could put a name too. Camerawork for the movie is good, nice solid frames with no shaky imagery which seems all the rage with some of the more modern teen movies. And a soundtrack that for the most part has a track played at different pitches and speeds, so the composer had a relaxing time.

As touched upon there seems little reason to give this the HD treatment other than the fact that the movie was filmed in that format. While the colours are crisp, and the edges are nice and clear, had I not received the HD DVD for nothing I’d be incredibly cross with myself if I had gone to the trouble of buying it.