Disturbia is a 2007 American neo-noir psychological crime thriller film directed by D. J. Caruso and written by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth.
Starring Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Sarah Roemer and Carrie-Anne Moss, it is about a 17-year-old named Kale Brecht, who is placed on house arrest for assaulting his school teacher and who spies on his neighbors, believing one of them is a serial killer.
Bored, Kale watches his neighborhood with binoculars, including his attractive new neighbor Ashley Carlson, and Robert Turner, a solitary man.
One night, Kale becomes suspicious of Turner after he returns home in a 1960s Ford Mustang with a dented fender, which matches the description of a car given on a news report of a serial killer at large.
Ronnie then realizes he left his phone in Turner's car and breaks into his garage, with Kale watching at a distance.
When Ronnie gets trapped when the garage door closes, Kale tries to rescue him, but alerts the police by tripping the ankle monitor.
Kale exacts revenge on the pranking neighborhood children before kissing Ashley on his sofa, while Ronnie playfully videotapes them.
As Christopher Landon heard an NPR show discussing Martha Stewart being on house arrest, he started thinking on what he would do in a similar condition, "already sort of being a voyeur, I figured that I would just be spying on my neighbors all the time.” He made the protagonist a teenager dealing with his father's death to reflect his own life experiences.
Caruso auditioned over a hundred males for the role in five weeks before settling on LaBeouf as he was looking for someone "who guys would really like and respond to, because he wasn't going to be such a pretty boy".
The Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust filed a lawsuit against Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks, its parent company Viacom, and Universal Studios on September 5, 2008.
(Ownership of the copyright in Woolrich's original story "It Had to Be Murder" and its use as the basis for the movie Rear Window was previously litigated before the United States Supreme Court in Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 (1990).)
Contrary to some media reports, the claim was based on the original Woolrich short story, not the movie Rear Window.
2010), on the basis that the original Woolrich short story and Disturbia are only similar at a high level of generality and abstraction.
[16][17] After the dismissal of the copyright claim in federal court, the Abend Trust filed another lawsuit in California state court against Universal Studios and the Hitchcock Estate on October 28, 2010, for a breach of contract claim based on earlier agreements which allegedly restricted the use of ideas from the original Woolrich short story and the movie Rear Window whether or not the ideas are copyright protectable, that the defendants had entered into with the Abend Trust after the Supreme Court's Stewart v. Abend decision.
The website's consensus reads: "Aside from its clichéd resolution, Disturbia is a tense, subtle thriller with a noteworthy performance from Shia LaBeouf.
Scott (filling in for Roger Ebert), with Roeper saying, "This is a cool little thriller with big scares and fine performances.
"[27] William Thomas of Empire gave it 3/5 stars and wrote: "despite the 'edgy' title, Disturbia is content to be a multiplex-friendly teen thriller with a higher degree of slickness and smarts than most of its contemporaries.
"[29] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave it 2/5 stars, writing: "Despite the interesting set-up, the action degenerates into obvious implausibility and silliness - fatal for a suspense thriller - and boredom sets in.