There is, of course, something familiar about “Disturbia,” in which Shia LaBeouf’s house-arrested teen spies on his neighbors and comes to believe one of them is a murderer.
It’s junior league “Rear Window.” In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic, Jimmy Stewart played a nosy photojournalist with a broken leg who, bored out of his mind, aimed his telephoto lenses at the apartment building behind his – and came to believe that one of the tenants was a wife-killer.
But is “Disturbia” a rip-off of one of cinema’s greatest achievements or a respectful homage that, like a million Brian De Palma movies before it, ultimately goes its own artistic way?
“I’ve seen ‘Rear Window’ a few times,” says “Disturbia” screenwriter Chris Landon.
“But, believe it or not, the inspiration behind this was actually Martha Stewart, not Alfred Hitchcock. They were talking about her house arrest on the radio, and I started thinking about the concept and what I would do if I were on house arrest. Already sort of being a voyeur, I figured that I would just be spying on my neighbors all the time.”
“It’s obviously inspired by the idea of a guy being stuck in the house,” adds “Disturbia’s” director, D.J. Caruso. “Even (executive producer) Steven Spielberg said, ‘Look, we want to pay homage. We don’t want to remake the movie – that would be a disservice.’ ”
“Once we embraced it, you start to realize what’s best for the story. I obviously sprinkled a few of my own homages in there, whether it’s a little kitten or the flash that goes off in the video camera.” Interestingly, there were more than the usual number of equipment glitches on the Paramount soundstage where “Disturbia” was shot on the same Paramount soundstage Hitchcock used for “Rear Window.”
Caruso hopes that, wherever he is, Hitch understands that the younger director’s intentions were pure.
“Obviously, ‘Rear Window’ was a big inspiration,” Caruso acknowledges.
“I embraced it instead of running away from it. But I didn’t want it to be a remake because that would be silly. You can’t remake ‘Rear Window.’ ”
Actually, some fools tried. A TV movie update of the cinematic classic aired in 1998, starring the late, paralyzed Christopher Reeve, no less.
It didn’t get good reviews.
