WARNING: This Review May Contain Spoilers
I’m going to start this by being completely open with you all. I know I usually keep the personally opinion until the end but I went in to this already believing that Disturbia was never going to be as good as Rear Window and I wasn’t disappointed. No, this isn’t just because I don’t rate Shia LaBeouf as an actor but that does slightly add to it. Now, it’s time for me to explain my issues with this unneeded remake.
Unnecessary Backstory
Disturbia begins with an opening scene of Kale and his father on a fishing trip with a fatal conclusion. Well, fatal for his father anyway – Kale only comes away with a broken leg. As a recent viewer of Rear Window, I thought ‘OK, we have been given a backstory to why Kale’s leg is broken and he’s stuck inside’ – you know something we don’t have in the original, we just know that Jeff’s leg is broken. Wrongo! The addition of the broken leg is completely misleading. Instead, Kale is so affected by his father’s death that he ends up under house arrest for punching his teacher. I get that they want to try and make it their own but there’s no need to add the broken leg if it isn’t necessary to the storyline.
The Character of Ashley
I’m in two minds over this if I’m honest. They definitely make her character bigger than that of Liza in Rear Window there’s no doubting that. However, part of me quite likes the fact that they have slightly merged Liza’s and Ms Torso’s (a socialite seen in Rear Window when Jeff is watching his neighbours) characters from the original into one person – they do this by having the scene of Kale watching Ashley stretching while he is spying on his neighbours. Having said that, this does cause there to be only two female characters throughout the whole film – Ashley and Kale’s mother.
Over the Top Romance
I’m not talking about constant scenes of PDA or sex scenes. What I mean is I think they make the relationship between Kale and Ashley more prominent than it needs to be. In Rear Window, we are already aware of the relationship between Liza and Jeff – there’s no need to build up to it’s climax because we already believe that they are at the pinnacle of their relationship. The fact that their relationship takes such precedence in Disturbia that they actually miss the potential murder (it also happens a lot later than in the original but that’s comes of adding an unnecessary opening scene). I actually think this affects the whole film because the whole point of it, is the suspicion of the neighbour because a possible murder is witnessed.
Overly Interactive Killer
I’m not sure if this is an effect of the new generation of films or something else but I 100% prefer the way that they have the killer in Rear Window than in Disturbia. There is no interaction between Jeff and Therwold until the final scene and ultimate confrontation of the original film. Now, on the other hand, Disturbia builds the character of Turner to be much bigger than he needs to be. He gets close to Kale’s mum like they are trying to develop a relationship between them and even threatens Kale with her life towards the end. I think it creates more suspense in the original film (Hmm, Alfred Hitchcock – isn’t he the Master of Suspense? Oh yeah, that’s why it works better!)
In Conclusion
I’m basically about to repeat what I said at the beginning but here we go anyway. I expected a bad remake and that is exactly what I got. I think if they tried to make it something more of their own it wouldn’t be so bad. I would’ve even accepted the killer being female instead of the inflated character that they created. As I said in the beginning, I’m not blaming Shia LaBeouf for how bad the film was but for me he didn’t help matters because I genuinely do not consider him as good actor.
