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Having not put much on the line, Two For The Money didn’t exactly hit it big at the box office. The movie pulled in a weak $23 million domestically, and with American football not exactly the most universal sport, Two For The Money only pulled in a meager $7.5 million from international audiences.

Disturbia

In theory, Two For The Money might have sounded decent. And in theory, Disturbia had no business being anything other than a travesty against good taste and the good name of Alfred Hitchcock. Disturbia (not quite a remake) is a teenage take on the Hitchcock classic Rear Window – and it is actually quite good. Disturbia takes nearly everyone off guard when the movie kicks off with teenage Shia LaBeouf’s Kale and his father getting into a violent car accident. Kale survives but forever blames himself for his father’s death. Anger issues compound the usual teenage angst and when Kale is put on house arrest for the summer, he takes an obsessive interest in seeing what the neighbors are up to. Disturbia, even with an ending that fits pretty firmly into the thriller mold, still manages to capture the awkwardness of being a teenager as well as the rush and buzz of voyeurism that made Rear Window so unique.

A lot of people dismiss the film a bit too quickly – granted, most films that have the gall to retread territory already walked by Hitchcock are asking for that type of dismissal on principal alone. But Disturbia is really more inspired by Rear Window’s themes than it is by the actual plot. And most uniquely, it is mature for a teen thriller. As a kid who blames himself for his father’s ill-timed fate, Kale finds redemption by the film’s end when he does right by his family and ultimately saves his mother from meeting her own grisly end. There is an extra level of depth that isn’t common in films of this ilk.

Disturbia was LaBeouf’s pre-Transformers coming out party, opening in April dead-zone that precedes the summer box office. Modestly budgeted at just $20 million, Disturbia was supposed to play second fiddle to an adult thriller with star power called Perfect Stranger. That release featured the always in decline, but never hitting zero pair of Bruce Willis and Halle Berry. Instead, Disturbia’s opening weekend matched Two For The Money’s final gross and doubled the opening of Perfect Stranger. And while Perfect Stranger slipped quietly into obscurity, Disturbia stood atop the box office for three straight weekends, totaling $80 million domestically and $118 worldwide.

Disturbia was executive produced by Steven Spielberg and distributed by DreamWorks – and it’s hard to say what, exactly, Spielberg saw that caused him to tap Caruso to direct Disturbia – but the move clearly paid off in spades.

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