"Devoid of chills, thrills, or even cheap titillation, 'The Roommate' isn't even bad enough to be good." Wow, I love how Rotten Tomatoes advertized this film to death, and yet it still came down to a that. If you wanted to get any real thrills pertaining to… More
"Devoid of chills, thrills, or even cheap titillation, 'The Roommate' isn't even bad enough to be good." Wow, I love how Rotten Tomatoes advertized this film to death, and yet it still came down to a that. If you wanted to get any real thrills pertaining to this film, then you're best bet was to just hang out on the RT site for about the month they had this film advertized everywhere, just waiting on the edge of your seat for this film to come out and get panned, as it was so obviously going to. Man, I can't help but feel a moderate sense of disappointment in RT for overselling a film that we all knew was going to be terrible; but hey, they probably got plenty of big bucks out of it. Yeah, I know, shame on the sell-outs, but at least they're sticking to their guns and actually advertizing movies; unlike something like Music Television, which actually has "Music" in its title, and yet all they do is show bad reality shows, bad sitcoms, bad movies, bad game shows and "Rob Dydrek's Fantasy Factory", which is actually kind of decent, and just occasionally pop up a sub bar that briefly describes a song playing in the background. Well, in all fairness, I would say, in the immortal words of Mark Knopfler, "I want my MTV", but considering how bad contemporary music is, they can keep that garbage on in the background, because I'm suffering more than I can handle in this 95 minute long film, alone, and this is some of the better garbage that I've heard from recent music catalogues. If nothing else horrifies you in this film, then it's soundtrack, and yet that's among the least of this film's problems, which isn't to say that it doesn't have "some" passable things about it; emphasis on the "some".
If I can say anything about the film, then it's the fact that... um... some of the girls are pretty. No, but seriously, if I can particularly compliment anything about this film, it would probably have to be John Frizzell's score, and I'm not just complimenting it because every moment in it's playing is a moment where they could have played anothe really bad piece from the soundtrack. True, Mr. Frizzell has got to be as conventional of a score composer as they come, but at least he's ripping-off quality scores. True, this score isn't terribly bang-pow, but it has a cool, sobering rhythm to it that's familiar, but never not rather impressive, and sure enough, it's enjoyable, even in a film this unenjoyable, partially because it really supplements the intimidating atmosphere. Of course, for something to supplement a product, that product first has to exist in order to be enhanced. Well, unfortunately, no matter how much Frizzell tries, the thriller aspect comes out as a mere fizzle, and yes, I'm sorry, but that cheesy rhyme was, in fact, intented. Hey, at least it's not as lame as the "thriller" aspects of the film, which are so startlingly ineffective, with absolutely no chills, oomph or even something as cheap as jump scares for that matter, which I can somewhat understand, because if they pulled something like a jump scare, the film would, for a split second, become inconsistent by being momentarily exciting, something that this film is most certainly not; neither when it comes to the scares or even the plot, such as it is.
Not only is the film not even mildly thrilling, but it's boring as all get-out, with no life in the air and long periods of absolutely nothing happening, at all, and yet, when something does actually happen in the "plot" it's so startlingly same-old-same-old. There's virtually nothing terribly unique at any point in the film, rendering it painfully predictable, something that can work in some thrillers, should there be enough bleakness in the aura to at least play with your knowledge of what is too happen next and leave you compelled to see how it's going to work in the film, yet the film is too incompetent to even pull that off. The film is in no way compelling, and not just because it's so boring and predictable, but because it's all but entire empty of the human touch, boasting characters that are truly unlikable, simply because they're so unbelievable. Now, I understand that friendships and youth - even as old as college youth - can haze someone's judgement, but the tell-tell signs - nay - warnings that fall into Minka Kelly's Sara Matthews character's lap are so glaringly obvious that you can't even attach to her as an endangered lead, because she's just too unbelievable for you to even feel for her as a likably competent person, much less entrapped victim, and with most everyone else feeling so insignificant as anything other than components to the underwhelming thriller aspects, there's no one that can attach to as even humans, and the performers really aren't helping. Not only is there no human touch to the characters on paper, but there's no real juice in anyone's dull, at best, barely passable translation of the characters, with the biggest acting flops being people that need to be anything but: the leads. Now, I'm not saying that the Sara Matthews character is a heavily layered one, but Minka Kelly can't even have the character go from so-so to mildly chipper without the transition being jarring, yet if there's anything that she's consistent about, it's cheesiness and stiffness in her line delivery, robbing our main lead - whose human presence as the audience's avatar is one of the key aspects of this film - of any life or compellingness. As for Cam Gigandet, I don't even know where to begin with him, because it's so absurdly hard to describe just how bad, one-note and even overly squinty he is, but believe me when I say that I'm pretty much understating when I say that he's so lifeless, so wooden and blank-faced - and yet somehow muggier than a coffee container at the same time - and so devoid of any acting presence, and watching him try to act is easily more horrifying than the actual antagonist, and that's really saying something, considering that Leighton Meester is so startlingly ineffective, not simply lacking an intimidating presence, but any presence at all, as she too, like everyone else in the film, is so wooden and inhuman, further draining this film of its blood until it is left nothing more than yet another dry, cold and hardly, if at all enjoyable drop of conventional swill in an ocean of countless thrillers of its type.
When it's all said and "finally" done, all I can say that's positive about this film is really nothing more than John Frizzel's sharp, dark score, and even that is rendered ineffective, being drowned out by the total absence of any intimidation in the overly conventional, hardly-eventful and just plain boring plot that goes plagued by unlikable and inhuman characters, made all the more unengaging by borderline across-the-board weak, if not just plain awful performances, ultimately leaving "The Roommate" to fall as a bloodless, uninspired bore of a non-thriller.
1.5/5 - Bad
