Disturbia

The idea for D.J. Caruso’s film arrived in traffic: Christopher Landon was listening to NPR, heard an item about Martha Stewart under house arrest and took the premise from it. He wrote the screenplay with Carl Ellsworth. The opening is personal as well: Landon lost his father at sixteen and wrote while still dealing with it. Finding Kale took five weeks and over a hundred auditions, and Shia LaBeouf reached Caruso through Steven Spielberg; before shooting the two watched Rear Window, Straw Dogs, The Conversation and Say Anything. The shoot ran from 6 January to 29 April 2006 in Whittier and Pasadena, so the neighbouring houses stand in different cities. The board first rated it for adults over violence and terror; on appeal it dropped to PG-13. In 2008 the Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust sued, arguing the film rested on “It Had to Be Murder”, the 1942 Cornell Woolrich story; in 2010 the Southern District of New York found for the defendants, holding the two alike only in generalities. A good fit if you want the suspense to come from a boy who cannot leave the house whose evidence convinces no adult, not from the killing itself. Not for you if you expect the spying to be settled morally; here it opens a door to the girl next door.