If possessive is an understatement when describing your roommate, you’d better start packing once she starts calling you her ‘friend’. Sara Matthews (Minka Kelly) learns this the hard way, but maybe that’s because she’s too young to have watched Single White Female, a 1992 thriller starring Jennifer Jason Leigh that seems to have inspired this movie.
As a freshman studying fashion at the University of Los Angeles, Sara moves into the college dorm and returns after a night of partying with her friends, Tracy Morgan (Alyson Michalka) and Stephen Morterelli (Cam Gigandet). While intoxicated, she meets her new roommate, Rebecca Evans (Leighton Meester).
Taken by Rebecca’s flair in drawing as well as her impressive wardrobe, Sara and her become fast friends, and Rebecca readily picks Sara up in the middle of the night, after Tracy ditched her at a party. The very next day, Rebecca brings Sara on a tour around the city, and their bonds strengthen as she learned more about Sara.

However, Sara slowly becomes aware of and alarmed by her roommate’s increasingly over protective and clingy behaviour – she was thrown off by Rebecca unprovoked hostility towards Stephen, and she gradually starts making a fuss about Sara staying out late and not picking up her calls.

She visits Rebecca’s house on Thanksgiving and finds in her room numerous portraits of a girl, Maria (Nina Dobrev), whom the pair bump into at a coffee house later that day.
“I was never your friend,“ Maria declares to Rebecca, after she’s introduced, sparking Sara’s curiosity and fuelling suspicions towards her roommate. The final straw comes after Sara finds psychiatric medication in Rebecca’s drawers.
Sharing a room with a schizophrenic with bipolar disorder is never a good idea, under any circumstances. Call her loyal, brave or just silly, Sara should have packed and fled once she found out.
In this thriller flick filled with frat boys and party girls, there’s plenty of eye-candy to keep you entertained when there is little action going on.
Ironically, Cam Gigandet (Sara’s boyfriend), who starred in Twilight, is once again set against Matt Lanter (Sara’s ex-boyfriend, Jason), who played ‘Edward Sullen’ in Vampires Suck, a spoof of Twilight series.

Repeatedly compared to Single White Female (1992), which itself was not a critics’ darling, going by the Rotten Tomatoes review site, The Roommate does indeed have some undeniable similarities with it. Both involve a pair of female roommates, one of whom is mentally disturbed and possessive, a history of sisters who died in childhood, murdered pets and a clingy ex-boyfriend who ends up murdered.
Given these unabashed coincidences and perhaps seen against director Christian E. Christiansen’s earlier nomination for an Oscar for Best Short Film in 2007, the critics’ harsh comments on the film seem justifiable.
Although predictable and never actually giving you the chills of psychological thrillers like Black Swan or Shutter Island, The Roommate has its own moments of suspense.

From self-mutilation to murder, nothing’s too much for her to do just to eradicate anything or anyone that upsets Sara, or threatens their relationship. Meester’s creepy of a mentally confused girl makes up for the mediocre plot and substandard dialogue.
She may have played the character of snobbish but likeable career woman Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl, but actress-singer Meester transforms into a psychotic and obsessive teenager in this thriller.
Meester exhibits her artistic range here, and she’s easily the most exciting character to watch out for in The Roommate. The movie itself, however, did not do justice to her commendable effort in her portrayal of Rebecca.
The movie’s trailer perhaps tries to strike fear in the hearts of 16 million college students in America, alluding to the fact that anyone of them could be assigned a loony bin killer as a roomie. Well, the odds of that happening are about as good as the ones for this movie to win an Oscar.

Movie: The Roommate
Rating: 2/5
Opens: April 27, 2011
Duration: 93 min
Language: English
Age Rating: NC 16
Genre: Thriller
Director: Christian E. Christiansen
Cast: Alyson Michalka, Leighton Meester, Minka Kelly, Cam Gigandet