Roommate movie overview

The Roommate follows Sara (Minka Kelly), an Iowa girl who has moved to Los Angeles to study fashion at college. She's assigned a roommate, a wealthy Pasadena art student named Rebecca (Leighton Meester). At first, they seem like they're going to be BFFs. But quicker than you can say Single White Female, Rebecca soon starts to show her crazy true colors.Rebecca has developed an obsession with Sara, and begins to target those people -- other friends, love interests, professors -- she feels are taking Sara away from her. Needless to say, the situation ultimately deteriorates from the uncomfortable to the dangerous.

Labeling The Roommate a psychological thriller is like calling the Twilight films horror movies because they have vampires and werewolves in them. As with Twilight, this is a slick, teen-oriented and watered down genre flick made for college kids who just want to see something for and about them. It's superficial, not terribly bright but easy on the eyes. Kind of like a sorority chick.
Since it's rated PG-13, The Roommate is never truly edgy enough to develop thrills nor is it titillating enough to fully exploit its hot chicks in trouble premise. Your run-of the-mill slasher flick does a better job of capitalizing on sexy chicks in peril. At least Meester's performance is effective enough to be creepy at times.

The rest of the cast are simply there. Kelly's merely eye candy as "the straight man" to Meester's more colorful role. Cam Gigandet, as Kelly's new boyfriend, once again mistakes squinting and smirking for acting, while Matt Lanter, Frances Fisher and Tomas Arana are wasted in what amounts to cameos. Billy Zane makes a welcome appearance as a douchey fashion professor.

If anything director Christian E. Christiansen manages to create a certain uncomfortable tone for the film, even if he's a little too in love with close-ups in order to do that. The Roommate's biggest problems are more on the conceptual and story level. If you want to make Fatal Attraction or Single White Female for the current generation of youths, offering them a movie that's a glorified CW show probably isn't worth their money when they can just Netflix the better and edgier originals instead.