My review of The Roommate

Single White Female remake that won't admit it's a remake. Charming.

Since this is a remake (even if it won't admit that it is) I have no problem comparing it to the original film.

Acting/characters: Can anybody say cardboard cutouts? well if you can't I will say it for you; cardboard cutouts. No one in this film was any different than anybody else in a dozen other films like this one. The acting was similar. It was just run-if-the-mill acting in every bad sense of the word.

The one person that you would hope gives a good performance (no I'm not talking about Billy Zane whose role is so minor it's really just a cameo more than anything else) was that of the psychotic roommate. And yes, she was the highlight...but that's like saying that a team losing a game by 15 points instead of 20 is a shining moment in the season. It didn't do anything to make this film much better. The original character was complex in her neediness. There was far more to the character than simply "she is obsessed with her roommate." This character was nothing new. she was almost a normal horror villain. She just did what she did and that was it. no layers, no meaning, nothing like that. She was just psychotic for no good reason. Forget medical disorders and such, I need a better reason for that. Tossing in info that she has mental problems doesn't make the character any deeper or more layered. Instead she's just another character in another movie. .5/10

Plot: Watch Single White Female...there's the plot. Oh there are some differences of course. It isn't a shot-for-shot remake (thank goodness) but if you have seen the original, you know what is going to happen with the film before it happens...heck, if you haven't seen the original you still know what is going to happen. It is one of the more predictable films that I have seen in a little while and that is saying something. It can hold your interest for a bit here and there, but it never takes any risks at all. it never attempts to shock you. It never attempts anything at all except re-packaging the original film and selling it back as something new. I simply cannot respect a film at all that doesn't even have the guts to admit that it is a remake. I put this film in the same category I would put Transmorphers or Paranormal Entity. .5/10

Screenplay: Like I said, nothing new here. It never tried to go anywhere. They didn't try to write interesting dialogue at all which is a fatal flaw considering the fact that a lot of the movie hinges on the interactions of the two leads. If what they are saying to each other is not interesting than the movie loses all of its appeal because there is no reason to watch it because we don't care about the conflict that the two are having. We don't care when they are having fun moments together, we don't care when they argue, we don't care at the end. They could just be mouthing things to each other and we as the audience wouldn't know the difference because we are just not interested in what they are saying. 0/10

Likableness: At the very least they could have made it a little terrifying. One of the creepy things about the original was that Heady (the original roommie) could flip from loving and caring to deadly with a drop of the hat and it would seem totally natural and thus far more terrifying. The lead crazy here just didn't pull that off and if you can't then your movie is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It is a remake that won't admit that it is a remake and it doesn't have the guts to take any risks at all. It was mildly entertaining here and there but overall, I wouldn't watch it again. I would suggest skipping this one if you come across it. It is a failure of a film. .5/10

Final Score: 1.5/40 3% (S)
Tomatometer rating: 4%
Tomatometer rating if my review was added: 4%


No trivia time for this one either...what?

 

Yeah, The Roommate is definitely a remake.