The Roommate Dir. Christian E. Christiansen

[Sony Pictures; 2011]

Styles: Psychological Thriller
Others: Single White Female

It could be argued that some films are exceedingly difficult to encapsulate in an impartial manner, because the events that comprise their narratives are so ludicrous, so unlikely, so “contrived” (to use that most fetishized of film critic clichés) that when expressed, even in brief, unembellished sentences, they can’t help but evince a quality of mild sarcasm or outright contumelious-ness on the part of the critic. The Roommate may be a minor offender of this nature, as what follows is the most impartial capsule summary of its plot I was capable of writing: after Sara Matthews (Minka Kelly), a freshman fashion major from a small town, moves into her dorm room — which resembles a large, tastefully decorated suite in a five-star hotel because, after all, why should a beautiful young fashion student be forced to “rough it” — she decides to attend a Frat party with her friend Tracy (Alyson Michalka), whom, we are forced to conclude, has befriended Sara at some point before the film’s late point of action. Later that night, we are introduced to her beautiful, spoiled rich-girl of a roommate, Rebecca (Leighton Meester), who is “weird.”

Of course, we are also forced to conclude that she is weird, as there are no real clues for this apart from the funny look Sara gives her when they first meet. While students of film are often instructed to “show and not tell,” scenes such as these exemplify screenwriter Sonny Mallhi’s tendency to neither show nor tell nor vaguely imply. Sara is supposed to be a fashionista and, to this end, always wears a hat. When she begs Professor Roberts (Billy Zane), who also wears hats, to grant her a registration override for his course, he is reluctant at first, but then buckles, presumably under the influence of her hat. Soon enough, Rebecca has completely lost her mind, is stalking Sara, harassing her friends, and seems to be want to assume her identity. We later learn that Rebecca likes “weird” art, for which she provides creepy exegeses, and does not like clubbing. But the true cause of Rebecca’s pathology is not explained until the film’s third act, when we learn that she is “just plain crazy” and has stopped taking her Zyprexa. We are also told (or forced to guess) that she is an only child with a history of stalking girls and had always wanted a sister, which makes Sara, whose sister Emily died tragically young, an ideal target for her scary love.

The truth is that, apart from an embarrassingly amateurish performance by Michalka, the film boasts disproportionately well-intentioned and largely effective work from Meester (who can even resist the bonkers histrionics expected of an actor in a role such as this), Kelly, and Cam Gigandet as Sara’s wisecracking love interest, Stephen. Furthermore, many of the film’s scenes of psychotic menace — excepting the film’s laughably stupid dénouement, in which unexplained Thor hammers are wielded and Sara, despite having another able-bodied adult in her corner, finds herself in the position of having to jump from a window ledge onto a nearby terrace to escape her unarmed, 110 lb. aggressor — are genuinely scary. And the filmmakers even make effective use of some traditional visual-narrative devices. For example: towards the end of the film, when Rebecca brings Sara home to meet her parents and shows her a drawing of one of her past victims, a closeup of the subject’s eye dissolves into a match-shot of the family’s dinner table, upon which is held an awkward meal revealing further details of Sarah’s crazy past, the overall effect being to pull the viewer both literally and figuratively “deeper” into her psyche; in another scene, Rebecca, posing as Sara, engages in an act of phone sex with Sara’s ex-boyfriend, Jason, while staring at a picture of a young Emily and Sara, both of whom she, presumably, wants to replace.

But where The Roommate truly and most unforgivably fumbles is in Mallhi and director Christian E. Christiansen’s continual refusal to demonstrate any causality between the alternately loopy or violent scenes that constitute their film: before Rebecca begins mutilating and beating herself, the only indication we are given of her mental state is that “weird look” on the part of Sara. And it really is too easy to chalk up any number of bizarre personality traits and plot convolutions to the mysteries of the human mind (see Shutter Island). Also, given that most college campuses have zero-tolerance policies regarding stalking, harassment, and fighting, it’s difficult to believe that Rebecca could viciously assault and disfigure one of Sara’s friends without being immediately expelled. Another drawback of chalking Rebecca’s pathology up to a mere chemical imbalance and making a concerted effort to depict her as pathological — in other words, a victim and therefore not really “evil” — is that the filmmakers have done their protagonists something of an injustice: Rebecca’s horrible death, which Stephen and Sara callously brush off just one scene later with a cheeky wink and a giggle, strikes us more as the pathetic decline of a lonely, sick person than the righteous destruction of a villain.

Most Read



Etc.