The Film
LeBeouf plays a troubled teen who often finds himself in the midst of some form of mischief or another. Eventually, he finds himself saddled with three months of house arrest and is forced to wear a small ankle collar that alerts authorities if he leaves the premises. I thought it was a boring setup personally, watching Shia’s character Kale play games and do nothing all day. Eventually he gets to eavesdropping on neighbors, finding out various secrets about them, like a couple’s affair. Sarah Roemer’s character moves into town, and a romantic comedy subplot begins between those two while they simultaneously try to figure out and prove to adults that their neighbor played by David Morse is a serial killer.
The film is actually a take-off from Hitchcock’s Rear Window from the fifties. I’ve never seen Rear Window, but the relatively dull, shallow pace and feel of Disturbia kept it from being entertaining. I couldn’t find myself sincerely thrilled or even interested in what to me was just another teen movie.
On Blu-ray
The move to Blu-ray for this film wasn’t a hard one I imagine, having been recording digitally to begin with. For the most part, it’s a good sounding, good looking film. There are a lot of dark scenes that can bring out some visual miscues, but they weren’t too distracting. It’s not the best put together Blu-ray I’ve seen or heard, nor the worst.
As far as extras, there are several and they’re pretty good. A high def, fifteen minute ‘making of’ feature is included. There is also a trivia pop-up feature that you can enable while watching the movie; this is one of my favorite types of extra features. There is an audio commentary track as well, with LeBeouf, Roemer, and director Caruso all chiming in various stories and thoughts on the film. Lastly there are four deleted scenes and a Still Gallery, which you may view once, if that.