Grade: A- | After assaulting his Spanish teacher, Kale (Shia LaBeouf) is sentenced to three months’ house arrest. At first, he accepts his fate and takes to pigging out on junk food and daytime television, but his mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) quickly puts a stop to that. She makes it quite clear that he is not on a vacation, and demonstrates this by taking away two large sources of entertainment: his Xbox and iTunes.

The boredom and isolation leave Kale feeling anxious, and in a desperate attempt to amuse himself, he begins to spy on his neighbors. His focus soon narrows to a single man: Mr. Turner (David Morse), who, Kale is convinced, is a vicious serial killer.

Forget, for the moment, that this is a blatant “reinvention” of Hitchcock’s voyeuristic classic, “Rear Window.” Forget, for the moment, that yes, it is Louis from “Even Stevens” up on the screen. And forget, for the moment, that this is, basically, a teen flick.

“Disturbia” is not to be missed.

It’s a rare occurrence that thrillers are actually scary. Time and again, spooky soundtracks and loud noises – lame – are employed to try to get the adrenaline pumping. But more often than not, the fear factor is left up to horror movies. Unfortunately, today’s horror genre seems too busy shocking audiences with mindless, disgusting and painfully excessive gore to successfully cross that scary boundary anymore.

Not so with this film.

As Kale’s investigation of Turner intensifies, the audience becomes empathetically involved; Kale’s anxiety, paranoia and mistrust is palpable, and it’s shocking to find the feelings leaping from the screen to the audience. David Morse’s sinister performance only helps this sentiment: He is able to play the creepy next-door-neighbor all too well with his cool, unwavering gaze and his intimidating onscreen presence. The ominous atmosphere intensifies rapidly and is enough to have you sinking lower in your seat and wondering aloud what’ll happen next.

A word to the wise: See “Disturbia” with a group of friends. What’s most entertaining is listening to the snickering and whispered mentions of “Even Stevens” around you fade into nothingness, only to be replaced by yelps of surprise and whimpers of fear.