Rashid Irani's review: The Roommate

She’s the proverbial belle from hell. For his American feature debut, Danish director-Christiansen, best known for his Oscar-nominated short At Night, rehashes the 1992 tease-and-thrill chiller, Single White Female. He shouldn’t have bothered.

So much room doom

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The Roommate
Director: Christian E.Christiansen
Actors: Minka Kelly, Leighton Meester
Rating: 1-1/2

She’s the proverbial belle from hell. For his American feature debut, Danish director-Christiansen, best known for his Oscar-nominated short At Night, rehashes the 1992 tease-and-thrill chiller, Single White Female. He shouldn’t have bothered.

Everything that made the original memorable is missing here, from the stylish trappings and sturdy script to the taut direction and intense performances.

Alternately dull and annoying, The Roommate narrates the all-too-clichéd tale of a wannabe fashionista (Kelly) who’s terrorised by her psychotic new roommate (Meester) at a fictional Los Angeles college.

The storyline gets sillier as it goes along, leading up to a preposterous climax. The dialogue and the background score boggles the ears.

All in all, The Roommate is a deplorable botch.