by Craig Jelley

Created on: June 29, 2009   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

Transformers star Shia Labeouf features as a troubled teen student under house-arrest in the D.J. Caruso-directed Disturbia. The voyeuristic thriller is loosely based on the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Rear Window, though it is rather more aimed at the widely stereotypical 'MTV Generation' .

The films itself centres around Kale Brecht, a student under house-arrest for 'popping' his teacher, who makes the mistake of mentioning his deceased father. The same father who died months earlier after a crash in a car that Kale was driving. While under house-arrest he's cut off by the outside world by his ankle tag, limiting his movement to 100 metres from his house, and also his mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) who cancels his subscriptions to various luxuries as punishment. Kale is sent into a spiral of boredom and as a remedy begins to chronicle his neighbours' routines, particulary his new neighbour Ashley (Sarah Roemer).

So far so good, but not very thrilling. But all that is about to change when another neighbour, the infinitely creepy Robert Turner (David Morse), piques Kales interest. After hearing on local news about a missing girl abducted by a man in a Mustang with a dented bumper, he sees his neighbour Mr. Turner backing into his garage a mint green Mustang with a dented bumper! And so the mystery begins!

To describe this film as a thriller would be mostly inaccurate as it feels like a jumble of genres. Sure, there are bits that will thrill, will make you jump and will get your heart beating, but they are a small part of the film. The rest of the film is comprised of comedic and romantic elements. Shia Labeouf himself gained his acting chops in the TV comedy series 'Even Stevens' and doesn't fail to entertain here, with dialogue laced with sarcasm and general mirth, but it's Kale's pal Ronald (Aaron Yoo) who brings the biggest comic relief to the movie, from instigating set-ups where they get caught peeping on Kales gorgeous neighbour in the swimming pool to juvenile wordplay with the spanish word for 'perhaps' which sounds suspiciously like 'kissass'. Neighbour Ashley provides the romantic foil to Labeouf's Kale, progressing from much-spied-upon girl-next-door to co-conspirator as the film progresses.

The film is typically linear for a film aimed at the teenage market, with no real sub-plot throughout the film, bar the romantic entanglements. A missed oppurtunity lies with the police officer who is on-call, should Kale stray too far from his house, as he

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