Disturbia: A new Frankenstein? Gavora 1
The art of film is something that has revitalized the art of literature in recent years. Film can “bring a movie to life” so to speak, and help others view the scenes and ideas from a book as they were meant to be interpreted by the author. The novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley and first published in 1818, is a very controversial novel which has been interpreted through many different films, each showing the novel in a new light. Even other movies not directly related to the film have echoed it, and have many similar themes and actions which mirror Frankenstein’s underlying principles. The movie Disturbia, is one which although not directly related to Frankenstein, has many of the same themes and ideas as Frankenstein. It is a horror film just like Frankenstein, and incorporates many of the same emotions Frankenstein does such as mystery, suspense, and even darkness. Although the film Disturbia does not seem to be a version of the Frankenstein story, I believe it can be viewed as a version of Shelley’s novel for the way it interprets two of the main underlying themes in the novel, monstrosity and secrecy. These two themes are evident in two main parts in the film, one occurring in the middle of the film which we will call “the confrontation” and one towards the end which we will call “ the epiphany.”
One of Frankenstein’s main concepts is secrecy. In the book, Victor keeps his troubles and mishaps a secret until the very end when he tells Walton of his life and the sadness and pain he has endured. In Disturbia, secrecy is the main underlying theme in the film, as the main character Kale, secretly knows his neighbor Turner is a murderer, and him and his friends try to keep their dangerous knowledge of Kale a
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secret. Just like Victor is confronted by his monster at the end of chapter ten, the “monster” in Disturbia, Turner confronts Kale’s girlfriend Ashley midway through
the movie in a scene which ultimately starts to confirm Kale and Ashley’s belief about Turner. Turner confronts Ashley and tells her to stop following him, and that he knows the kids have been keeping taps on him and snooping around his property. Ashley is frightened by the sudden appearance of Turner and is forced to admit to following him and says she will stop. This is a mirror image of the confrontation Victor has with his monster, as his monster confronts him and asks for a companion and Victor complies, just as Ashley does. This scene also ties in the idea of “dangerous knowledge,” something that many people overlook when examining Frankenstein. This term eludes to the idea that the knowledge which someone knows about something is dangerous in that the person puts themselves at risk by knowing the information. Ashley is putting herself at risk by thinking and having evidence that Turner is a murderer, and when Turner stops her in the parking lot he is showing he is catching on to her and Kale’s trail. This knowledge is also evident in Frankenstein, as Victor knows his creation is killing his family, yet no one believes his knowledge, and his creation ultimately sets him up, leading to Victor trying to blame the monster for what the monster did, but Victor is not believed and thought to be lying which leads to him being incarcerated. Furthermore, this scene brings to life Victor’s confrontation, as Ashley exhibits the fear that Victor did during his confrontation, and this is a prime example of how the
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medium of film brings to life a scene from a book, and shows how Disturbia is so closely linked with Frankenstein.
The overriding theme and plot of Frankenstein, is the theme of monstrosity and grotesqueness. Frankenstein is centered around a monster which the main character creates, and although in Disturbia the main character does not create the “monster” he deals with, he creates the situation he gets in because of the spying and way he acts towards his monster which is his neighbor. The scene at the end of Disturbia, when Kale realizes his mother is in grave danger, mirrors when Victor realizes that the monster came back for Elizabeth and not him. In the scene Kale is viewing footage from a camcorder his friend took while in Turner’s house an he sees a face in the vent on Turner’s floor. Kale immediately knows he has the evidence he needs on Turner and also realizes his mother is in Turner’s house and that she needs help. Kale sort of has an epiphany in this scene, exactly the same thing Victor has when he leaves the room after Elizabeth turns in for the night, and realizes the
monster is there to kill her and not him. The only difference in these scenes is in Disturbia, Kale is able to rescue his mother and kill Turner, while in Frankenstein, Victor does not get to Elizabeth in time. Despite this difference, this scene is still a good representation of Shelley’s novel because movies are a different element than novels in that they are made for the public where as novels are written usually for the author’s view of a story. In a movie, everyone wants to see the protagonist come out successful but in the time (1800s) of Frankenstein, a grotesque ending seemed appropriate to Shelley. These two scenes also deal with the underlying symbol of
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darkness. In Frankenstein, the scene where the monster kills Elizabeth happens at night. This shadows the idea that whenever something horrific happens in a story or film it is usually during the night or when it is dark outside, to mirror the “dark” emotions and actions that are taking place in the story. This is the same in Disturbia, as it is raining heavily and the setting is at night when Kale’s mother is attacked by Turner in his home. Again, the rain symbolizes the grotesque actions being witnessed, as Turner tries to stab Kale’s mother and eventually Kale, and the dark weather symbolizes the dark actions which are transgressing.
In looking closer at Disturbia, the film analyzes and re-tells the story of Frankenstein on a more local level. The movie takes the base of Frankenstein, the grotesqueness and deceptiveness, and puts it into a setting that the public of today can better relate to, because instead of creating a subhuman figure from scratch, Kale is a regular every day teenager just like you or me, and what happens to him could happen to anybody at any time. In the epiphany scene, the aspects of film are evident in that as Kale realizes he sees the face in the vent, the camera quickly flashes to both scenes of Kale looking into the camcorder and of Kale’s mother in Turner’s house showing the correlation between the scenes and the gravity of the situation. In this way, film does what literature cannot. It shows both sides of a story at once, making connections and correlations easier for the viewer, and reader.
While Disturbia and Frankenstein have many similar scenes, one glaring almost identical scene partakes in a scene in Disturbia that involves Kale, Ashley, and Turner. As previously stated the scene where Turner attacks Kale’s mother and
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Kale realizes his mother is in danger mirrors the scene where Victor realizes the monster came for Elizabeth and not him. When taking a closer look at the film, a more identical scene which echoes the monster’s actual attack of Elizabeth, is a scene where Turner attacks Kale and Ashley. Turner attacks Kale just as the monster attacks Elizabeth, but Ashley is able to come to Kale’s defense and kick Turner off Kale, while Victor was unable to wake up and stop the monster from doing the unthinkable to Elizabeth. Besides the glaring similarities of the two scenes, an underlying correlation is the fact that the monster attacked Victor’s lover Elizabeth, and Turner attacks Kale, Ashley’s lover. In both situations the lover of a main character is attacked, showing the divine thought that the best way to get back at someone who has done wrong to you is to hurt one who is closest to them, a lover, someone the character cares about beyond normal circumstances. After further review of Frankenstein and Disturbia, I firmly believe that this scene where Turner attacks Kale has a direct symbolism to Shelley’s scene in which the monster attacks and subsequently kills Elizabeth.
The medium of film is one which is very important in the realm of technology. Film is the channel which a book can be viewed, and it has the unique ability to have an audience see a book or movie the same way. Many people
interpret novels for themselves, and then when they see a film they can see the way it was meant to be seen by the author and can better understand different aspects of the story they might have missed. The basis of Frankenstein, of a story of grief, sadness, and monstrosity is one which has been re made in different forms,
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sometimes as an exact remake of the story or in a form which may not have even meant to be a form of the story but subsequently turns into a form anyway. In Disturbia this is the case, as a story of a deranged neighbor and the battle of a boy to save himself, his mother, and the community at large from a “monster” clearly echoes the basis of the 1800’s Frankenstein. Shelly might not have known at the time, but her once basic, grotesque horror story has turned into one which is interpreted differently and thoroughly everyday, one which has helped shape literature, and coincidently, film.
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Works Cited
Disturbia. Dir. DJ Caruso. Dreamworks, 2007. Film.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 2000. Print.
