The Roommate

How does a script like The Roommate even get sold in the first place? This is easily the most incompetent example of a psycho-thriller I have seen in years. It's badly acted, poorly written, has been edited with the subtlety of a chainsaw, and contains so many close ups of eyes and lips, I started to think that director Christian E. Christiansen (a Finnish filmmaker making his Hollywood debut) was under the impression that he was shooting a commercial for eyeliner or toothpaste. Christiansen's involvement is actually a cautionary tale for all budding filmmakers. You can get nominated for an Oscar (as he did for a short film he made back in 2008), and still get stuck directing schlock like this.

The Roommate is a lifeless clone of a dozen other movies about a nice girl who moves in with another girl who seems nice at first, but slowly starts to show signs of psychosis, insanity, and a tendency for sitting in dark corners, glaring at everyone else, while ominous music drones on the soundtrack. The nice girl here is Sara (played by Jessica Alba-impersonator Minka Kelly). She's a Freshman at a Los Angeles college, and aside from a dream of being a fashion designer, has no real personality traits. While out partying with her slutty friend Tracy (Alyson Michalka), she meets her future love interest Stephen (Cam Gigandat), who comes across as the world's nicest and most understanding drunken frat boy. When she returns to her dorm room after a night of partying and drinking spiked punch, she meets her new roommate, Rebecca (Leighton Meester), a girl who comes across as a sweet, if somewhat introverted, artistic girl, but soon starts to show signs of psychosis, insanity, and a tendency for sitting in dark corners, glaring at everyone else, while ominous music drones on the soundtrack.

The movie doesn't have a good handle as to why Rebecca does what she does. She just does stuff for the sake of being evil, I guess. At one point, Sara is abandoned at a party by her friend, Tracy. So, Rebecca starts stalking Tracy, and even attacks her in the shower. Later, for reasons I'm still not clear on, Rebecca kills Sara's beloved kitten, Cuddles, by tossing the kitty in the washing machine and turning it on. She does this, I suspect, because every movie of this type needs a pet who gets tortured at some point, in the tradition of the rabbit in Fatal Attraction, or the puppy in Single White Female. (Which this movie owes a great debt of "inspiration" to, almost to the point of plagiarism.) When Sara visits Rebecca's parents for Thanksgiving, the mom ominously asks if her daughter has been taking her psychosis medication. This does not exactly act as a window into Rebecca's madness, rather it provides an opportunity for Sara to finally get a clue, and realize her roommate is nuts. (A fact that dawns on her much slower than it really should.)

You know, under the right circumstances, I could see the appeal of The Roommate as enjoyable trash or even a guilty pleasure. But, it fails even by those standards. This is a bloodless, watered-down, and dumbed-down PG-13 corporate product that exists to steal some money from pre-teens who will come looking for an easy thrill, which the movie doesn't even provide. And even though the cameras are not afraid to venture into the shower rooms once in a while, it chickens out on giving us the very basic titillation that an enjoyably trashy film would. This is a strictly by-the-numbers product that's been robbed of every inspiration, thought, or purpose. All that's left is the relentlessly banal dialogue, and characters who not only have no personality, but lack the common sense we expect even from characters in a movie like this. If these aren't the dumbest college students captured on film, they come pretty close. Maybe it's because they hardly go to class.

If anyone should welcome the arrival of The Roommate, it's struggling screenwriters. It should give them hope. After all, if Hollywood is willing to buy Sonny Mallhi's moronic script, there's hope for them too. This is a movie that holds no distinction, other than being the first strong candidate of being one of the worst films of 2011.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments