Reviews for Disturbia and The Host

For my first real post, here are two movie reviews. I have no idea how to make a cut like thing, and there are some sort of spoilers here, so if you haven't seen it and don't want to know, don't read it.

I was kind of pissed when I heard about the premise of Disturbia. You can't ripoff Alfred Hitchcock and make a teen thriller. You ripoff Alfred Hitchcock, hell, you even just remake Alfred Hitchcock, you better win an Oscar. Especially with a movie like Rear Window. You don't touch that unless you intend on making a masterpiece.

Anger aside, I wanted to watch something with my sister and this was a tolerable choice, so I rented it. After Transformers, I have a new appreciation for Shia LaBeouf, so I saw this as an opportunity to enjoy more of his breakthrough past Disney. And that's what it was.

Disturbia hooks your attention right from the start by showing you the saddest thing it can think of (Watchmen advice anyone?). Young Kale, our hero, is fly fishing with his father in the most beautiful surroundings the SFX crew can find. On their car ride home, with Kale driving, they get into a terrible car crash and poor Kale watches his father die. We flash forward to a year later to the last day of school where our hero punches his Spanish teacher in the face for harassing him over some homework. Even though he's commit ed assault two, the judge lets him off and gives him house arrest, because "losing a parent is a difficult thing". Messed up kid trapped in his house all summer long, something is bound to happen.

Now that Kale is stuck in his home, all the plot points have to come to him, so he can view them through his binoculars. For example, a lovely thin blond girl moves in next door and doesn't really mind that Kale watches her undress, fight with her parents, and go swimming in the tinniest bikinis I've ever seen. In fact, she likes it enough to become the romantic interest for the film. Unfortunately, on the other side of the house is a serial killer. He does not like being watched.

Now the movie keeps trying to convince us that Mr. Turner, the non bikini clad neighbor, does not kill people, that in fact he is just shy and doesn't have many people skills. If that were true, the movie would be far more interesting. Think, a kid goes crazy in his own home, no one believes him, we root for him, the girl roots for him, his best friend roots for him, his mom looks depressed but wants to believe he's sane, turns out he really is nuts and gets sent away, leaving everyone behind him feeling heartbroken and a little silly. Sadly, they don't make movies like Caligari anymore. Anyone with brains knows that Mr. Turner hacks up women long before the conclusion, and the movie doesn't have the balls to make us feel dumb. The corpses are terrible too.

All that being said, Shia LeBeouf is a delight. He's bumbling, he's awkward, he's a little too sure of himself, and what he lacks in looks he makes up for in goofy little smiles. He also makes a great noise when he kisses the skinny blond girl. Really, his sexual body language is just on the mark. I'm glad we're going to see more of him in the future. He makes this movie worth watching. Which is sad because Carrie-Anne Moss is in it as his pathetically oblivious mother, and we all know she can be a lot more bad ass than that.

The Host came roaring out of Korea last summer, and no one wanted to go see it with me. So I finally got to rent it, and while it wasn't as good as I was hoping, it managed to send me on an emotional roller coaster and showcase one of the cooler beasties I've seen in a while.

A stuffy American scientist orders his assistant to dump hundreds of bottles of toxic chemicals into the Han river because they are dusty. Soon after a creature half dinosaur half Predator comes busting out of the waters and begins to terrorize the population of Seoul. A young girl is taken by the critter and her family goes on a mission to save her, which is made increasingly difficult by the government who claims the monster is the host to a deadly virus and anyone who comes in contact with it must be quarantined.

It's funny, it's gross, and then it's really sad, but the thing I liked and disliked most about this movie was its "the government is the real monster" theme. You've got this fantastic creature eating people and throwing up their bones, but the real horror is the American and Korean government who begin to dump Agent Yellow on thousands of people to try and be rid of the beastie. The movie comes close to beating you over the head with the stupidity of the government, but narrowly avoids it by pushing heart-wrenching family moments in your face. Still, I can't help but enjoy watching the government get trashed, being so unhappy with my own. If your going to bash the establishment, now is certainly the time.

It is the mark of a film made somewhere besides Hollywood that things end in the worst way, but The Host sneaks out of this mold, even if only slightly. It's not the happiest ending, far from it really, but it's cute and it's satisfying. There is nothing unresolved here, and in a monster movie, that's the way it should be.