Kale wastes no time concluding that his female neighbor -- Ashley (Sarah Roemer ) -- is hot and that his male neighbor -- Mr. Turner (David Morse ) -- is sinister. And the movie wastes no time showing us how right he is. A topless swimmer, Ashley doesn't simply disrobe for the camera -- Kale's? the movie's? -- she friskily peels her clothes off. And Mr. Turner? He just looks up to something. Morse isn't even trying for subtlety (though that tiny hoop earring is a nice, silly touch). He shows up in every scene with a glint of ax murderer in his eyes.
This year has already brought us one superb voyeurism drama in "The Lives of Others ," which, in part, was about how watching strangers can make us invisible to ourselves. It seems stupid to subject "Disturbia" to any such comparison. The notion of a boy whose life becomes one of increasingly urgent surveillance seems ripe for a moment when public trust is harder to come by. But the movie doesn't want to be smart. It wants to be a hit. And under the circumstances, the two appear to be mutually exclusive.
The filmmakers (D.J. Caruso directed, Carl Ellsworth and Christopher B. Landon wrote the screenplay) don't bother with character surprises or narrative trap doors. That said, the sequence in which Kale dispatches his antic buddy Ronnie (Aaron Yoo ) to poke around Mr. Turner's garage armed with a video camera culminates in a funny mini-satire of Asian horror.
Otherwise, the movie just punches its way toward the dumb, violent finale (alas, another killer who'd rather prattle on than murder his victims; Morse is playing a talky version of Michael Myers from the "Halloween " movies). Every piece of the story is jammed predictably into place. Kale sees the cute girl next door; the cute girl comes over. Kale sees the killer next door; the killer comes over.
