Disturbia - another Rear Window remake

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.


Release Date: April 13th, 2007 (wide) 

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Carrie-Anne Moss, David Morse, Sarah Roemer 

Directed by: D.J. Caruso (The Salton Sea; Taking Lives)

Premsie: After his father's death, Kale becomes sullen, withdrawn, and troubled -- so much so that he finds himself under a court-ordered sentence of house arrest. His mother, Julie, works night and day to support herself and her son, only to be met with indifference and lethargy. The walls of his house begin to close in on Kale. He becomes a voyeur as his interests turn outside the windows of his suburban home towards those of his neighbors, one of which Kale begins to suspect is a serial killer. But, are his suspicions merely the product of cabin fever and his overactive imagination?

[Derek237]

Looks sooo much better than the other old one with that guy from the bunny movie.

[polkablues]

This looks more like a remake of the Simpson's episode.

[MacGuffin]

I don't mind updating/remaking/borrowing/retelling/relauching if it's done for the better, or at least told in a different way. In this case, it is not. It could have been a good update by using the now rampant practice of voyeurism in today's times. But it doesn't even tap into that.


*SPOILERS*


The thing about Rear Window is that it was a perfect blend of character and suspense. In this film, it goes for the 2 dimensional characters with false scares of any other cheap thriller. The villian is not given any depth and mystery. In fact, the story has a huge amount of exposition on the front end, that it feels like a long time before it gets to the thriller aspect, then tosses it off to the side and then throws away all logic out the window. The end takes place in a dark, dank area that you can't see what's happening. The movie as a whole felt like you were one step ahead of it, and that's obvious even if you haven't seen the film that it's ripping off.

[matt35mm]

Oh, I thought you were gonna inform us of plans for Disturbia: The Musical.

[MacGuffin]

Spielberg ripped off Hitchcock classic: lawsuit

Steven Spielberg and major Hollywood studios stole the plot from Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1954 film "Rear Window" in making last year's "Disturbia," a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on Monday said.

Dreamworks, its parent company Viacom Inc, and Universal Pictures, a unit of General Electric Co's NBC Universal, are accused of copyright infringement and breach of contract for making "Disturbia" without first obtaining permission from the copyright holders, the suit said.

Spielberg is credited as executive producer of the film, which grossed about $80 million at the U.S. box office, and is named as a defendant.

According to the lawsuit, filed by the Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust, the basis for Hitchcock's 1954 film was "Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint," a short story by Cornell Woolrich.

Hitchcock and actor James Stewart obtained the motion picture rights to the story in 1953. The lawsuit argues that Dreamworks should have done the same.

"What the defendants have been unwilling to do openly, legitimately and legally, (they) have done surreptitiously, by their back-door use of the 'Rear Window' story without paying compensation," the lawsuit said.

A spokesman for Spielberg declined to comment. Representatives of Viacom and NBC Universal were not immediately available for comment.

According to the lawsuit, "Disturbia" and the "Rear Window" story are "essentially the same." Both are murder mysteries beginning with a man who, while peering from his window, witnesses strange behavior in the home of his neighbor.

The protagonist in all three of the works behaves in essentially the same way, interacts with similar characters and the plot unfolds in basically the same way, the lawsuit said.

"In the Disturbia film the defendants purposefully employed immaterial variations or transparent rephrasing to produce essentially the same story as the Rear Window story," the lawsuit said.

In reviewing "Disturbia," the New York Times called it "a kind of adolescent 'Rear Window."' The Toronto Star newspaper called it "a rip off with wit."

[Ravi]

Eagle Eye looks like every Hitchcock "wrong man" film.

[samsong]

dj caruso ≥ alfred hitchcock

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

The lawsuit over the similarities really seems kind of bizarre now that I think about it.  Sure, they're quite alike, and I'm not necessarily defending the creativity of Disturbia, but it's just an idea.  They lifted the whole "mistaken murder plot," but it kind of ends there.

It's not hard to come up with a story like this.  Someone who is under house arrest will make wild assumptions when seeing what he saw, and something like house arrest is easy to film, since it's locked in a location.

I'm fairly certain that "Rear Window" was ripped off since it is popular and remakes sell because the population at large apparently are oblivious and/or hate "old" movies.  But the idea that a simple plot element that is done over and over in thrillers of interpreting something one way and finding out it's something else is a staple. 

I'm constantly writing things, and I'm sure it's happened to YOU, THE READER, where someone will read over your work and say "This is just like [some other movie]" and often it's one you've never seen.  So what do you do?  Scrap your idea?  See the old movie and change yours so it's different?  The romantic comedy genre would implode if not for recycling themes and settings of the woman of your dreams being right in front of you the whole time.

Plus, Disturbia is so bad, it's hard to say that it ripped off of Rear Window.  I do believe in giving credit where credit is due, but when movies are vomited out every year, and even those that are painstakingly developed, ideas will rehash and they won't necessarily be "remakes."

Most of the time, it'll be a case of "mistaken identity."