The Roommate

Hands in the air if you’ve heard this somewhere before: Sara (Minka Kelly), a small town gal at college in the big city of LA, is overjoyed when she’s assigned an almost perfect roommate in wealthy art student Rebecca (Leighton Meester) – except she isn’t so perfect. Obviously. Rebecca appears to have seen Single White Female and Fatal Attraction one too many times and we, unfortunately, have seen this all before. She quickly becomes obsessed with her new BFF for no reason other than plot convenience and soon begins stalking-for-beginners, targeting Sara’s friends and love interest. Devoid of any serious gore, The Roommate is a pretty tame affair with a staggeringly low body count, but this zero thrills, tension free, predictable schlock does have its easy-on-the-eye cast of smirking thirtysomethings trying to pass as teens going for it. Pity then that director Christainsen chooses a teen-friendly rating over cheap titillation and his uneven tone squanders all the ingredients for a good horror movie completely. [Thom Atkinson]