There is a sequence in D.J. Caruso’s “Disturbia” in which Kale (Shia LaBeouf) slowly goes insane after finding himself placed under house arrest for punching out his Spanish teacher. Kale plays X-Box, downloads music, eats cereal at mid-day, picks his nose and generally carries on like a restless slob on summer vacation. “Nothing to do when you’re locked into vacancy”, as a John Hughes malcontent once put it. The dimly-lit, tobacco-hued house, still heavy with the death of his father, sits in a pregnant stillness cast in tobacco shadows and shafts of tired sunlight the color and texture of lite beer. There’s a sense of desperate boredom in the air and constant reminders that life’s still going on someplace else. Then comes a signature moment for this daft but agreeable film, a moment of sheer beauty improvised by LaBeouf: Kale slices a bagel in two for a snack, and then, as he’s finishing up, in a fast, throwaway gesture he wipes the crumbs off the counter.

In workmanlike Hollywood thrillers like “Disturbia”, it is sometimes easier to focus on what distinguishes such a film from its cousins than it is to marvel at its individual virtues. And small touches like LeBeouf’s can make the difference between an engaging entertainment and a bland, unwatchable product. Wiping the crumbs off the counter: an automatic movement of the hand, a small, deferential gesture by a disaffected kid who still knows and observes his mother’s rules. Kale is likeable, thanks to LaBeouf, and none of what works in “Disturbia”—the interplay between the various characters who accidentally find themselves living out “Rear Window”—would be possible without him. LaBeouf is charming, with elements of a hunk, a dork, and a moody loner playing over his thoughtful features. Unlike most recent fast-talking screen teens, his portrayal of Kale has more sweetness than archness, more innocence than snark. There’s nothing precocious about Kale, nothing to suggest his lines have been written by cynical adults giving their hero the acid tongue and the detached coolness they obviously wish they had back when it counted. The presiding spirit over these characters is minivans, backpacks full of young adolescent fiction, Nickelodeon (appropriate for LeBeouf), early MTV, Judy Blume.

Caruso’s suburbia is a throwback to a more innocent age, too. The leafy streets of Kale’s block actually have character and color. It looks like a nice place to live. This is not the cookie-cutter hell of a million other films that smugly mock the stultifying sameness of the American suburb. Kids still prank their neighbords by leaving paper bags full of shit on doorsteps, stay up late to watch forbidden channels, throw backyard parties, have parents who are merely bastards and not sex offenders or shallow tyrants. These surbanites are neither consumerist zombies (“Edward Scissorhands”), bottomless appetites masquerading as spacy half-naked kids (“Bully”, “Alpha Dog”) or a bunch of smiling liars waiting for a trigger event to release their putrid, latent pathologies (“American Beauty”). Caruso could have made “Disturbia” yet another cynical movie about the rottenness of the great American middle class, but he depicts a setting which harbors no deeper meanings, no subtextual commentary on our society, and for that his film seems deeper rather than limited. And LeBeouf, again, fits perfectly. He is allowed to be a teenager with issues—he watches his father die in the twisted metal of a wrecked car he was driving—without being a Hollywood teenager.

The hero’s likability, and the unsinister portrayal of his surroundings, make the straightforward and entirely unimaginative murder plot much more palatable. In fact, until the end, when the story suddenly devolves into a color-by-numbers thriller, the murder plot is more a device to facilitate the romance between Kale and the girl (read: supermodel) next door, Ashley. This relationship, involving his awkward covert surveillance and her quirky tomboy flirting, is far more interesting. Here again Caruso won the battle at the casting stage; Sarah Roemer, a gawkier teen queen Cate Blanchett, imbues her character with just enough brains, savvy, and casual coolness to make us almost forget she could be a swimsuit model or a Renaissance princess. Refreshingly, at times Caruso uses the camera to make her a mute object of Kale’s voyeuristic lust, such as the swimming pool scenes in which Caruso dumps the storytelling and brazenly zooms in on her thighs, breasts, and butt. Why not? The story involves a horny teenaged boy with binoculars—there is much more honesty in showing us what’s got Kale sitting in the dark with a bowl of popcorn and a hand on his trousers than there is in the usual teen flicks that parade shots of young female flesh in the most gratuitous, pervy manner.

LeBeuof will no doubt need to serve his apprenticeship on more teenage roles like this one (he plays what looks like a Kale clone in the upcoming CG-orgy “Transformers”) but “Disturbia” proves he has real star quality. Already a proven comedic talent—his squirrely wit and pitch-perfect timing carried the otherwise forgettable TV show “Even Stevens”—LeBeuof has the chops to be a major actor in the mold of a Tom Hanks. Like Hanks in his first comedies, a few of which are painfully stupid, he is already magnetic enough to draw big; “Disturbia” would have made for an utterly dull studio film without him. Watching him risk his life to save his mother in the film’s climactic scene, it is easy to become invested in what happens to his character—and to forget that the killer’s house has suddenly developed more floors, rooms, and sub-levels than would be possible in such a house, or that his mother (a wasted Carrie-Ann Moss) would never have been there had she been written into any reasonable script which wasn’t looking to cut corners in the name of cheap suspense. LeBeuof is better than the material he’s given here, and by the looks of it he’ll be escaping his own form of house arrest—the baleful house arrest of the pigeonholed child star—very soon. May he never forget to wipe up the crumbs.