Film

A Fond Look Back At ‘Disturbia’, The Perfect Teen Thriller That No One Seems To Remember

Making you distrust every single one of your neighbours since 2007.

by Michelle Rennex  25 September 2020
disturbia Shia Labeouf

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Over the last week, Shia LaBeouf has been trending thanks to his pretty iconic performance as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times Live, a celeb-packed virtual table read of the 1982 classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. 

Shia LaBeouf’s acting skills during the one-hour reading shocked fans who weren’t sure whether the actor was just really, really good at playing a stoned surfer or was just really, really stoned throughout the charity event. Either way, being stoned and still being able to act your ass off is a pretty impressive feat.

But do you know what else Shia LaBeouf did that was also really impressive? His perfect performance in the perfect teen-thriller, Disturbia. 

Despite getting a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 77 per cent, a critic rating of 69 per cent, and a box office gross of 118 million, no one ever really seems to talk about, or even remember, the iconic flick.

For those who don’t know Disturbia came out in 2007 and was a thriller that mentally fucked with anyone who watched it. Disturbia was like the Don’t Breathe and A Quiet Place of the 2000s, and it had lasting impacts on whoever watched it.

Seriously, anyone who saw the Shia LaBeouf thriller can’t say that they 100 per cent trust their neighbours today, and likely have their own story about purchasing a set of binoculars for themselves after watching the film a decade ago.

But when searching the film up online, it’s strange to see so few people talk about Disturbia. Perhaps Rihanna’s track ‘Disturbia’, which dropped around the same time, overshadowed the film, or maybe everyone has just forgotten how good the movie was. Either way, I am here to refresh your memory.

Disturbia Is A Top-Tier Thriller

The plot of Disturbia — a film partly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window — follows troubled teen, Kale Brecht (Shia LaBeouf) who ends up with three months of house arrest for punching a teacher at school.

As it is summer and Kale has an ankle monitor with a proximity sensor strapped to his leg, the teen spends his days indoors, watching TV and playing video games until his mum cuts off his internet access.

This forces Kale to do nothing else but watch the people in his area to pass the time, which is when he grows suspicious of his next-door neighbour, Robert Turner. During this time Kale starts to notice odd things about his neighbour, like Rob’s beat up car matching the description of a local serial killer’s vehicle and a woman in panicked state running around Rob’s home.

After Kale becomes more and more sceptical of his next-door neighbour, he enlists the help of his best friend, Ronnie, and new girlfriend, Ashley, to figure out what is really going on with Rob. But after Ronnie breaks into Rob’s house and gets stuck inside while trying to search for answers, Kale’s ankle monitor goes off as he tries to save his best friend. When the police arrive, Kale accuses Rob of having a dead body in his home, which turns out to be a deer carcass.

From here, the thrill really begins. In an attempt to save her son from prison, Kale’s mum goes over to Rob’s house to beg him to not press charges for the break in. But at the same time, Kale watches the video that Ronnie managed to capture in Rob’s home and sees an actual corpse through the air vent.

The film’s last 20 minutes leaves you on the edge of your seat as you watch Kale go head-to-head with Rob as he tries to save his mum, best friend and girlfriend. But honestly, even though the last 20 minutes are a trip, the entire movie is a mind-fuck.

Disturbia Is A Total Mind-Fuck In All The Best Ways

The best part of Disturbia is that when you think you know what’s happening, the film flips the script. 

As you watch the nerve-wracking events unfold in front of you and you think you’re keeping track, the actors and writers gaslight you and you’re left totally confused. This means when the jump scares and action scenes finally do happen, you’re taken off guard, which is what makes Disturbia SO GOOD.

Seriously, Disturbia was so powerful that it left me, as a 13-year-old, literally side-eyeing all my neighbours and buying shitty Hot Dollar binoculars to spy on people in my area to make sure they weren’t harbouring seven dead bodies under their floorboards, too.

Disturbia made me want to jump off roofs into pools like some sort of parkour god, and left me longing for an ankle bracelet of my own for the sole purpose of using the auto-alert feature in the real-life thriller that, thankfully, never happened to me.

Disturbia falls into the category of films that never get old no matter how many times you rewatch them — think Mean Girls, or Bridesmaids or Get Out. Even when you know the plot through and through, it’s still always fun on the second, third and fourth times. Yet, no one ever seems to talk about Disturbia like they do with other re-watchable classics.

Is it kinda dumb? Sure. Is it geared to teens? Yeah, definitely. But does it slap regardless? 100 million per cent, yes. Teen-thrillers don’t need to win Oscars to be great, but my God was Disturbia great — as was LaBeouf’s acting.

The late ’00s was around the time that LaBeouf was starting to become one of the ~it boys~ in Hollywood, and Disturbia was one of his first proper roles outside of his Disney gigs like Holes (also great) and Even Stevens (iconic).

Honestly, while everyone bangs on about how good Shia LaBeouf was in Transformers or in Indiana Jones, I’ll be here still shouting about his iconic performance in Disturbia — a guilty pleasure from the past, but a damn good one.

You can watch ‘Disturbia’ on SBS On Demand, and you should. It’s the best.