Once upon a time, Shia LaBeouf was part of the Disney stable of fresh-faced young actors, a stable that also included the perennial gossip-column girls, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears.

      While Lohan and Spears have been making spectacles of themselves, LaBeouf has taken a different path to stardom, turning in a series of strong performances, winning a daytime Emmy for Even Stevens and emerging as a star in Holes, arguably the best live-action theatrical release from Disney in many years.  But Even Stevens appealed to the tweener set, and Holes, based on an award-winning children’s novel, also had a juvenile primary audience.

      With Disturbia, the now-21-year-old actor stakes his claim to the attention of older viewers, while still connecting with his core audience, now grown into teen comedies and slasher flicks.

      Disturbia has elements of both of these teenage genres, and the film’s concept is hardly original: A character confined to his home witnesses an apparent murder, but can’t convince the authorities of what he has seen.  His efforts bring him to the murderer’s attention, endangering himself and his loved ones.

      Strong performances by LaBeouf and a good supporting cast are not enough to lift this picture out of its generic roots, but they do make it considerably more tolerable for adult viewers than much of the dreck that’s out there, with far more real terror than the blood-soaked carnage that often substitutes for true suspense in so-called “thrillers.”

      We meet Kale Brecht (LaBeouf) as a cheerful teen being taught fly-fishing by his dad. A horrific car crash on the way home kills the father and turns Kale into a basket case, guilty (he was driving), depressed, and detached from family and friends.

      Kale’s stressed-out condition causes him to attack his Spanish teacher, a crime for which a compassionate judge sentences him to house arrest rather than jail.  His mother (Carrie-Ann Moss), herself struggling to hold it together after her husband’s death, cuts him off from his usual amusements: television, video games, and the Internet.

      The bored Kale turns to spying on his neighbors, discovering various secrets: suburban adultery, pre-teens watching porn, an obsessive-compulsive who mows his lawn twice a day.

      Things look up when a hot girl (Sarah Roemer) moves in next door.  When Kale and his buddy Ron (Aaron Yoo) watch her through binoculars, she becomes their friend rather than filing charges, as would happen in the real world.  (By the way, there’s a bit of an “Ick” factor in the camera dwelling on Roemer’s body, forcing the reader to share in the boys’ voyeurism.)

      The relatively inexperienced Roemer (this is only her third film) is engaging as the new girl.  Cute but not too cute, she gleefully teases LaBeouf in their early scenes, then displays real terror during the movie’s tense ending. She clearly has a future in both halves of the teen genre.

      David Morse, most recently the creepy cop persecuting Hugh Laurie in “House,” here is the creepy neighbor Kale suspects of being a serial killer. His performance is surprisingly subtle – while he exhibits enough tics and mannerisms to sustain Kale’s suspicions, he also plays charming enough to win over Kale’s mom, and has the viewer wondering whether Kale’s suspicions are justified right up to the final confrontation.

      Although Disturbia is definitely worth seeing, Carmike has not made it easy. The theatre has evidently decided it doesn’t need to inform potential customers of its offerings – after shrinking movie listings almost to the point of illegibility, it has stopped running newspaper listings every day and no longer provide their showtimes to the Internet Movie Database. 

      To find out what is showing and when, you have to call the theatre, where you will be met with a busy signal.  Hey, if the theatre doesn’t want our business, maybe we should give them what they want.

      The opening-night audience was also uncooperative.  People talked nonstop through the previews and quieted only slightly when the film began.  I heard one man answer his cell phone at a key moment and was distracted by the light from other activated phones throughout. 

      People, the theatre is not your living room – please be considerate of other patrons.

         This review appeared in the Aberdeen American News on April 15, 2007.

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This page last updated on June 24, 2007.