THE ROOMMATE

THE ROOMMATE is a schlocky, violent thriller about a young freshman female whose campus experience, as well as her life and the lives of her friends, is threatened when she learns her roommate is suffering from a dangerous, psychotic breakdown.

Sara Matthews is an incoming freshman student with a major in fashion design. She is smart, ambitious and excited about her college career. She quickly makes friends with several of the girls in her dormitory, including her shy roommate, Rebecca.

As Sara and the other girls immediately jump into everything that today’s college has to offer, including frat parties, underage drinking and cute boys, the reclusive Rebecca chooses to stay behind and work on her sketches for class. As the semester progresses, the antisocial Rebecca becomes obsessed with being Sara’s only friend, even to the point of physically threatening other girls in the dorms as well as anyone else who gets between them. Soon, terror grows into full-blown brutality as Rebecca suffers a complete psychological meltdown and goes on a violent spree against Sara and anyone who stands in her path.

THE ROOMMATE follows in the path of several psycho-thrillers that have gone before it such as FATAL ATTRACTION and THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE. The plot is thinly woven together. The script shortcuts plot points and character motivations. And, the story, which is supposed to be a thriller, is hardly thrilling or frightening.

The movie also contains a very strong pagan worldview with no redeeming aspects whatsoever. There is also a promiscuous homosexual character as one of Sara’s closest friends, a lesbian who has no problem kissing and picking up strange, young women at a bar and taking them home. There is also depicted fornication, unmarried kissing, underage college drinking and drunkenness, lying, blackmail and some intense violence. This movie is not a media-wise choice for viewers, and there is much more redeemable entertainment to be enjoyed.

Finally, the movie handles mental illness in a slipshod, misunderstood and disrespectful way. Rebecca, the young woman who is suffering from the psychosis, comes off as vindictive, methodical, maniacal, cold, and calculating rather than someone who is struggling to maintain her sanity. Rather than painting her illness with any touch of humanity, she is portrayed as evil and villainous with death being her only fitting end. This is a negative, though subtle, media message about people suffering from mental illnesses.