Beginning college is a difficult period, with factors like leaving home, choosing classes and meeting new people causing an immense amount of stress.
“The Roommate” is here to add one more concern to the equation: room with a random pick and you might as well be signing your own death warrant.
Sara Matthews (Minka Kelly) is a newly arrived freshman at the University of Los Angeles and is dealing with all the usual college movie trappings of making hot new friends and attending impossibly wild parties.
Sara begins to suspect something might be amiss with her crazy-eyed assigned roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester) when she begins to break out in overprotective rages and tattoos the name of Sara’s dead sister on her chest.
The latter highlights the film’s inability to present characters as more than vague and stereotypical sketches. Rebecca is your stock movie psycho, and while she and Sara are theoretically briefly best friends, their relationship comes off as too absurdly awkward to seem plausible.
Secondary characters fare no better. Sara’s beau Stephen (Cam Gigandet) is an incredibly smug frat boy who is unable to wipe the ever-present shit-eating grin off his face, even during a potentially deadly fracas.
Generic party girl Tracy is just as one-dimensional, flashing partygoers in contrast to Sara’s more demure demeanor.
No one expects high art out of a thriller like this, and all of these shortcomings might have been forgiven if the film chose to add plenty of camp and over-the-top bloodshed.
“The Roommate” could’ve easily been good lowbrow entertainment, but it takes itself too seriously. Unlike Sara, the audience can’t change rooms, but they’ll probably want to leave the theater.
