Today is the final day of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. To honor this underrecognized memorial month—as well as to mark today as Halloween—I want to talk about the film Disturbia (2007).
Here’s the premise of the film. A young man named Kale (Shia LaBeouf) is out fly-fishing with his father. They have what seems to be a very warm, loving relationship. But alas, on the way home, Kale and his father are in a horrific car accident, which kills his father. Kale’s mental health is destroyed by this event, understandably, and he winds up assaulting his Spanish teacher at school. As a result of the assault, Kale—just shy of 18—is given a three-month period of house arrest and must wear an ankle bracelet that keeps him tethered to home.
During his house arrest, he is bored to tears, and he begins spying on his neighbors from the windows of his house. Doing so, he learns that there may be a serial killer in his neighborhood from watching the news, and he comes to the conclusion that it’s one of his next-door neighbors, based on what he sees through his spying devices. If you are thinking, Hey, this film sounds like a remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, you are absolutely correct.
Kale discovers the murdery neighbor only because he is actively spying on his teenaged next-door neighbor, Ashley (Sarah Roemer). He watches her exercise in her sports bra. He watches her swim in the pool in the family backyard, dressed in a string bikini. He focuses in tight on her ass, her hips, her body. So, we’re watching a film in which the main character—with a history of assault—is now actively stalking his teenage neighbor. In case anyone is confused, that’s extremely illegal, on more than one count. Kale is guilty of repeated, unrepenting acts of domestic violence against Ashley.
If you think I exaggerate, by calling what he does to Ashley “violence,” let me break things down. Stalking is a form of violence against women. And not only because it’s repeatedly been shown to be a risk factor for other forms of violence and assault; it’s a crime on its own terms, because it’s a categorical violation of privacy and bodily autonomy. Stalking has been included in the Violence Against Women Act since its inception in 1994.
That means this film was made 13 years into a culture in which stalking was defined as a criminal act of violence against women. Given his behavior, then, I was expecting Disturbia to drop the hammer on Kale.
Ashley eventually finds out that Kale has been spying on her, because she finds a bunch of videos of her on his recording devices. Please remember that, by this point in the film, she knows he is a convicted felon, wearing an ankle bracelet and under house arrest for assault. She asks him what the deal is, and he says that she gets to see the whole world all day long, and all he gets to do is look at her. She is, he explains, his whole world.
What is Ashley’s response to this extremely disturbing confession of psychosexual obsession and stalking? “That’s either the creepiest or the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.” And then she kisses him. So Kale gets rewarded for being a stalker, not punished.
From there, the film doubles down in systematically approving intimate partner violence (IPV). Specifically, this occurs when Kale tells Ashley that he doesn’t like who she’s friends with. He tries to control her one night when she throws a party that he—with his ankle bracelet—cannot attend. He is loudly critical of her, implying that she has weak judgment about people and social norms.
All of this—literally, all of it—is textbook coercive control: a dangerous and well-known form of intimate partner violence.
But it doesn’t stop there. Kale and Ashley nevertheless wind up in a full-on amatory relationship for the rest of the film. Eventually, Kale gets his ankle bracelet removed early thanks to “good behavior”—that is, helping to apprehend the murderous neighbor. Once removed, the first thing he does is go to Ashley’s property perimeter and physically, literally, cross a line that he had made of string to delimit the ankle bracelet’s “safe zone.”
Thanks, Kale, for helping catch the murderer. Now you may go continue to be a predator elsewhere on your own recognizance.
Horror films enable us to feel someone else’s vulnerability as our own. But this particular horror film misses the mark by a wide, wide margin.
And going on to be a predator is exactly what Kale goes on to do. Actually, not Kale, but his real-life self, Shia LaBeouf.
In 2020, LaBeouf’s ex-girlfriend, actress and musical icon FKA Twigs, pressed charges against him for assault, sexual battery, and emotional distress. Interestingly, LaBeouf wrote an email to The New York Times appearing to acknowledge his actions, pinning it all to his personal history of alcoholism. But, once he acquired legal counsel, he recanted his confession, and he forced Twigs to take him to trial.
The trial was scheduled be held on September 29, 2025—a day ahead of the beginning of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. But in late July of this year, Twigs and LaBeouf settled out of court. So now there won’t be a trial. I don’t see a scenario in which LaBeouf would have settled had there been no merit in her claims, so Mr. LaBeouf will get a similarly unencumbered ending to the one Kale got: Now you may go continue to be a predator elsewhere on your own recognizance.
To show you why this is bad, I’m going to quote pretty heavily here from the coverage we have of the allegations that Twigs made against LaBeouf. You can read an extended version yourself on Vulture:
LaBeouf drove recklessly with Twigs in the car, unbuckling his seatbelt and threatening to crash unless she professed her “eternal love” for him. When he eventually pulled over into a gas station, Twigs attempted to escape but was allegedly slammed down, strangled, and forced back into the car. LaBeouf shared the incident to another woman he was cheating on Twigs with at the time, according to the lawsuit, stating he dragged Twigs out of his car by the collar.
And
LaBeouf is also accused of isolating her from her friends, family, and creative team in London. The alleged abuse included squeezing her to the point of bruising, requiring her to meet a certain quota of physical intimacy enforced through harassment, keeping a loaded gun in the bedroom the two shared, requiring her to sleep nude, and knowingly transmitting an STI—something the lawsuit claims he had done to multiple partners prior. The suit also outlined the experiences of another of LaBeouf’s former girlfriends, stylist Karolyn Pho. LaBeouf, while drunk, allegedly pinned Pho to a bed and headbutted her until she bled.”
I believe in due process, and I’m glad LaBeouf would have had the chance at a proper trial. I can deeply understand Twigs’s desire to settle, too; she’s been through enough without adding the stress of a courtroom appearance.
But I will also say this: there appears to be a whole lot of corroborating evidence that he committed heinous crimes against her during their relationship, as well as against other sexual partners. Including, I hasten to point out, “isolating her from her friends and family.”
I highlight that one for two reasons. First, it chimes with what Kale did to Ashley in the film, by criticizing and controlling her. Second, isolation is the DV/IPV equivalent of a gateway drug: If the abuser can’t get his mark alone, he has a much-reduced chance of fully controlling her. Isolation is a sign of DV and IPV that we, as a society, need to be much more aware of.
If you have a close friend who’s dating someone that seems a little controlling, and you start to notice that she retreats from you or stops calling you, reach out to her. Press her to see you. If she makes lots of excuses, get worried. If you hear from your friend that she hasn’t seen or spoken with her mother or sister or cousin—someone whom she usually sees and/or speaks to frequently—dig a little further with your friend. And if you don’t feel good about what you hear—I mean, for sure, sometimes people take space from a relative because they need to, and that’s legit—but if you have the bad feelings in your belly about the whole thing, call her mom, call her sister, call everyone.
When victims can’t get to their support networks, those networks need to come find them. Not necessarily to do anything drastic, because sudden action can endanger the person being abused. But, at minimum, those in her network need to remind them that there is an outside to their crazy-making relationship; there is a group of loving, kind, nonabusive people ready to help them extricate themselves whenever they are ready.
I support films that cause us to encounter the vulnerability and harm done to people, whether as individuals or as classes. Indeed, this is precisely what I value about horror films: that they enable us to feel someone else’s vulnerability as our own. But this particular horror film misses the mark by a wide, wide margin. Because instead of feeling worried about Ashley, and instead of seeing Kale as a criminal and predator, Disturbia encourages us to celebrate their relationship and to think of him as the hero. This is a guy who beat up a teacher and stalked a teenage girl.
We have absolutely got to stop making films that condone this kind of predatory behavior. Because some people—including Shia LaBeouf—appear to have a hard time distinguishing between fiction and reality.
Featured image: Shia LaBeouf in Disturbia / IMDb.