So, Rear Window, right? One of those classic Hitchcock horror movies that scared people who lived in the black-and-white world, because it was entirely too plausible for their tastes, unlike such fare as Them! or It Came from Outer Space. Which, okay, possibly these people have a point, I guess. But also because the writing and direction were so wonderfully tense, about which the people definitely had a point.

Back in the spring, along came imitator Disturbia. Troubled teen Shia LaBeouf (soon to be famous for his role in Transformers, natch) is under house arrest. See, his dad died, right?, so he’s been having a bad year, and then his Spanish teacher, well, provoked him. Probably unintentionally, but we’ll never really know since his motivations are not explored. That’s okay, though. It’s a pretty minor plot point, except for the part where it sets up the rest of the film. Because now Shia has an ankle bracelet that keeps him confined to his property. This is a bummer, because his XBox account got canceled by his mom, a hot girl just moved in next door, neighborhood kids are tormenting him and then running away, and also because the guy in a house behind him seems to fit the information being provided in the media as a serial killer from Austin who, if it’s the same guy, has already kidnapped at least one person locally. All in all, it’s not the best summer to be trapped at home.

On the bright side, at least the girl came over to visit. But really, that just results in her (along with Shia’s mom and his best friend) getting entangled in the paranoia surrounding the neighbor. And that’s what makes the movie work. Whether he did or didn’t serial-kill all those girls is barely the point. It’s all that voyeuristic paranoia and how it affects people and what they decide to do about it. Because, up until the point where you take a sledgehammer to the interior walls and a shovel to the basement and back yard, he’s still Schrödinger’s serial killer, and it’s probably not cool to send people to tail him while other people break into his car and steal his garage door code. (Or, for that matter, take a sledgehammer/shovel to his property.) So, that’s good moralistic tension to drive a movie with. And then on top of that, I think it has a win over Rear Window, in that the hero of that movie was wheelchair-bound. Shia, on the other hand, is only bound by the law. In a very real sense, his imprisonment is by choice; he can cross that invisible line at any moment and take things into his own hands. But only if he’s willing to face the consequences of that action. That’s just a lot better piece of character tension than ‘if only I could get down these stairs; but I can’t!’

Simply by virtue of being a worthy successor to Rear Window in the tension-ratcheting department, it would be worth a Netflix (or, like me, dollar movie visit); what with the aspect that managed to top Hitchcock, watching this one at some point is pretty much mandatory. So, y’know. Tick-tock.