Post 162

Last night, I went to a little Halloween party, and we watched Disturbia.

Lame, lame, lame, laaaaaaaaame.

It's nice to see a movie like this every now and then, though, because I'm not torn over whether or not I liked it, and I can point to specific details as to why it was bad.

The movie starts out with a father and son fishing, having a nice time, and then, on the ride home, they get in a car wreck, and Dad dies. This is to establish angst in our teen protagonist because, as we all know, teenagers have to have some kind of terrible trauma in order to have angst: generally, teens are a mature, sensible, and, above all, level-headed group on the whole.

But you should have seen this wreck. It was pretty spectacular. They were driving a car down a highway, and they ran into the back of a similar sized car that was stopped on the highway. Did you know that when one car plows into the back of another, the moving car gets airborne, flips upside down and sails a few hundred feet before hitting the ground and then skidding and spinning to a stop? (When I got rearended, the car behind me just disappeared into my trunk--I totally got gypped!) And then some guy cruising along in a little pickup somehow didn't see this inverted car in the middle of the road and runs into it at full speed. More spinning and sliding. Dad is now dead.

Six months later, kid is in Spanish class, and he obviously hasn't done any work. He has no idea what's going on. He's sleeping in class. He isn't doing his homework. Teacher says, "What would your father think?" and kid punches him in the face, earning himself a summer vacation of house arrest. He's given a little ankle tracker thing and isn't allowed to leave the property. To compound the injustice, his mom discontinues his X-Box Live subscription and iTunes membership. So what's a boy to do but spy on his neighbors?

A pretty girl (I guess; am I the only one who finds nothing attractive about seductively dressed teens?) moves in next door. He doesn't even see her face: he sees her from behind as she's carrying a box. Of course it's love. A few days later, she notices he and a friend spying on her as she's swimming, so she comes over and they all become friends.

This--doesn't make any sense....

Later, she comes over all angry and asks why he spies on her, and he tells her, when he's watching her, he sees how she's different from other people: she reads books instead of magazines; she looks out her windows at the world, contemplating how to make it better; she looks in the mirror, not cockily, but pensively, wondering, "Who am I really?"

(Funny, every time he looked out the window at her, the camera gave us a close up of her butt.)

"That's either the creepiest or the sweetest thing anybody's ever said to me," she says, and then they dive into perhaps the longest make-out session in teen movie history (though I don't doubt there have been longer, I have thankfully avoided them).

Of course, in the meantime, the guy and the girl and the goofy-friend character (every movie needs one of those) are spying on the man they think is a murderer. They have nothing to go off of except for the kind of car he drives. But they are sure he's a murderer, so main character dude sets up a stake-out in his house and sends girl and goofy to follow this guy around and break into his house and stuff. One time, goofy gets locked in the house, so main character guy crosses the property line, which brings his parole officer running. The police, at main character's insistence, poke around serial killer's house, but they don't find anything suspicious, and then they leave.

And then serial killer--who is so methodical that he has built a surgery room behind a secret door in his hallway--suddenly goes crazy and starts attacking main character's mom and goofy friend and main character himself. Goofy gets homerunned in the face with an aluminum bat--full wind-up swing from a grown man--but, don't worry, he's okay: no permenant damage, just a little bruise on his temple.

Ya know, I hear that, if you're gonna get hit with a bat, the temple's a good place to go because it's so--strong--and not fragile.

Long story short, there's a chase that ends with main character stabbing serial killer with gardening sheers and pushing him into a sess pool full of the remains of murdered women.

This, of course, doesn't affect him too badly: the next day, he's back to making out with his girl friend and hanging out with goofy friend, and the police decide to take off his tracker because, hey, he killed a murderer, let's forgive his punching a teacher in the face, ya know?

Crappy, crappy movie.

And it was full of cheap shots, too. Knife-weilding murderer approaches a woman while the music swells tensely--haha, he just cut a price tag off of her dress; bet you didn't see that coming! I'm pretty sure it's never been done before. Pretty sure it wasn't horribly obvious. Or when the camera man walks with a staggering step toward the main character, appearing to be a POV shot from the antagonist but--nope--it really is just the camera man. And when goofy gets locked in the crazy man's house, he has a video camera. The cops show up and don't find goofy. Then main character starts getting video feed of goofy--and he's dead! But wait, that looks like my closet; better go investigate--haha, goofy, funny joke, man.

Anyway, if your a budding movie critic like me who occasionally enjoys watching a move that is easily lambasted, this is a good one for you. I haven't told you everything that's wrong with it because, if you do want a movie whose problems are numberless and ubiquitous, this is the movie for you, and I'd hate to ruin all the little flaws. But if you're looking for an enjoyable, worthwhile movie with character development and reasonable plot progression, this is not a good choice. Perhaps you could pick up Rear Window instead.

But you know what you really ought to do? Call off watching this movies to spend your time drafting a novel. Happy NaNoWriMo, everyone!