YMMV / Disturbia

• Catharsis Factor:
  • While it was very wrong for him to react the way he did, it is quite satisfying to see Kale knock down his teacher like that, after the teacher not only simply embarrassed him in front of the entire class, but had the audacity to bring up his father's death in such a hostile and provocative manner. Most social media comments on this scene will easily be that the teacher deserved what he got.
  • Kale being able to impale and kill Turner with the hedge trimmers elicits nothing but a strong response of relief after how much of a depraved madman he proved to be.
  • After seeing Officer Gutierez be a smug asshole for the whole film, many people were glad to see Turner kill him.
• Complete Monster: Robert Turner is a Serial Killer who moved into a suburban neighborhood to evade capture after killing several people in Austin, Texas. He builds a multi-layer Torture Cellar and killing lair underneath his house, with decaying corpses piled up all over the place. He seduces several women and invites them to his home before killing them, cutting up their bodies and disposing of them in garbage bags. When the teenage Kale Brecht discovers his true nature, he kidnaps and arranges to kill the boy's mother Julie and frame him for both that and the planned death of his best friend Ronnie. Turner also taunts Kale about the motivation being for believing his mother blamed him for his father's death in a car accident and forces him to write his own suicide note too. Turner further threatens Kale's love interest Ashley Carson both when she's stalking him and when she shows up to help Kale escape, and kills Officer Gutierrez, who arrives on the scene, by breaking his neck.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Kale's behavior as it goes into Sanity Slippage comes off as uncomfortable when you know Shia Labeouf began to suffer from an implied Creator Breakdown.
• Jerkass Woobie: Kale is aloof and impulsive. But it's hard not to sympathize with his situation.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Robert Turner. Put aside that he's a murderer, but the times when he isn't trying to kill someone and is instead showing Tranquil Fury makes him more terrifying.
  • The beginning scene where Kale and his father get into their accident. After another car slams into their car and leaves it more in a heaping wreck, Kale is able to get out of the car and rushes to his father's side. We only see Kale's slow, horrified, and borderline traumatized reaction to his father's face after the accident.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Ronnie's remark that his video of Kale and Ashley kissing will be the most viewed video on YouTube immediately dates the movie to the mid-2000s, when YouTube was the hot new website on the block. A video of two ordinary teenagers kissing usually wouldn't elicit a response even back then.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Julie is meant to be sympathic regardless of punishing Kale, her stern personality being the result the stress of raising him after Kale’s father died and wanting the best for him. But for most of the film, she constantly antagonises Kale when he’s clearly depressed, punishes him when simply talking or reprimanding him would do, and blames him for his father’s death, and to top it off trusts the serial killer next door way too easily. All this does not exactly endear her to the audience nor makes her changing for the better at the end feel all that earned.

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