Two films that echo themes from Hitchcock classics hit movie screens in recent weeks -- the question that lingers is this: if directors are going to crib from the Master, can't they try harder to learn from the Master?

With Disturbia, Director D. J. Caruso creates a "Rear Window" for Generation Y with less than Hitchcockian results...

The premise itself is brilliant in its simplicity: a victim of circumstance is confined to his home where in his boredom, he begins spying on his neighbors. One of those neighbors becomes the object of suspicion and dread when evidence begins to mount that he is a killer with the gruesome remains of a victim hidden on his property.

The original model for this scenario was Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, an elegant thriller starring some of the classiest actors in the history of the movies, James Stewart and Grace Kelly. Rear Window was a movie about adults for adults, and in this regard Disturbia suffers by the comparison.

Disturbia is to Rear Window what Cruel Intentions is to Dangerous Liaisons -- a lightweight teen flick patterned after an adult story.

Shia LaBeouf, who has become the heir-apparent for the roles John Cusack played in his youth, is Kale, a troubled teenager under house arrest.

Taking the part of the suspicious voyeur that was once played by Jimmy Stewart, LaBeouf is adequate to the task, though his acting displays the kind of restraint one would expect in a thinking rather than in a purely feeling actor. There are scenes in Disturbia that would have been far more effective if Kale's actions and emotions felt like they came from his gut, rather than being the surface affect of an actor going through the motions.

For better or worse, Disturbia uses much of its time establishing relationships with Kale's friends and neighbors and introducing a romantic interest in the person of Ashley, the new girl next door.

The flirtatious chemistry between the smitten but inexperienced Kale and the much more confident Ashley is one of the best things about the film. Indeed, it's the quiet, intimate moments between characters -- the warmth between father and son and the face-to-face confrontations with the calmly threatening killer that are the most emotionally effecting.

Unfortunately, the thrills and shocks that one would expect as the payoff for a film called Disturbia come as a series of very familiar, even hackneyed scenes the likes of which have been fodder for parody for at least ten years.

The truly unforgettable scenes in film are when our expectations are surpassed, when a moment we know will be scary is suddenly even more shocking, when an image of horror or suspense is so unique that it becomes unforgettable. The film Taking Lives by Disturbia's director D.J. Caruso did have an unforgettable scene in its satisfying climax. There are no such moments in Disturbia, and as a result the overall effect of the film is tepid, with a sense of opportunities missed for the sake of appealing to a young audience.

The disappointment of Disturbia is that it's not very disturbing at all.

In "Vacancy" a bumbling band of snuff-film producers are foiled by a hapless husband and his winsome wife in a film whose plot-holes present more vacancies than the Pinewood Motel itself.
There have been many cinematic tales of horror set in creepy flop-houses since Alfred Hitchcock immortalized the Bates Motel in his high-concept slasher flick Psycho. None have had higher expectations and lower payoffs than Vacancy, the first Hollywood-backed film by Nimród Antal.

The film brashly makes its influences and intentions clear in the retro-styled credits sequence that opens the film, featuring edgy theme music reminiscent of Bernard Herrman. Unfortunately, few of the Hitchcock inspired sequences that follow are as effective or well presented.

Presenting a story in the Stephen King vein (people dealing with banal, everyday misery are suddenly immersed in unimaginable, extraordinary misery), Vacancy follows a soon-to-be-divorced couple in the wake of a family tragedy on an ill-fated nightime drive detour away from a traffic jammed interstate highway to a grungy, desperation-time motel.

The Pinewood Motel is almost surreal in its distastefulness, but the series of events that place the couple in its questionable shelter are believable enough, even though the "car breaks down in the middle of nowhere" device has been spoofed since The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The couple, appropriately named Fox, are soon set up as prey for a pack of tormentors who are as devoid of human character or individuality as a pack of hunting dogs. The only antagonist who is given a human face or personality is the motel's desk clerk, a nerdy nut-case played ineffectually by Frank Whaley.

The first hints that there's something far worse than bedbugs lurking in the Pinewood are revealed in an unnerving and portentious way. Sadly, the chain of events that follow are so illogical, so unimaginative and so clumsily resolved at film's end that the strongest emotion evoked by Vacancy is shocked disbelief.

There are so many questions left unanswered by the numerous plotholes and leaps of faith in Vacancy that an entire prequel -- Vacancy: The Beginning? -- would be required to explain them. Better yet, how about bulldozing the set and next time, instead of taking this detour to nowhere, stay on the interstate. An hour and a half in traffic is time better spent.

Reviews of Disturbia and Vacancy were written by John Koenig for DarkRomance.com