There’s a bit of cruel irony at play in The Roommate, Christian E. Christiansen’s debut film in which its lead character Sara (Minka Kelly) plays an aspiring designer who moves to L.A. to get her college degree in fashion design. She’s beautiful, fashionably chic, and has a unique sense of style that her design professor (Billy Zane) says is something that “can’t be taught.” Ironically, that "unteachable" something is only one of the many essential features sorely missing from Christiansen’s film.   

The story from first-time writer Sonny Mallhi, an almost straight knock-off of Single White Female (1992), is told in a colorless, A-to-Z manner with very little suspense, no clever twists, and despite cinematographer Phil Parmet’s (Halloween 2007) muddy lens that tries to give Los Angeles a gritty edge, offers no visual style to distract from its brainless script.

Sara quickly befriends her new college roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester), a local southern California girl who seems quite normal at first. But Rebecca (don’t call her Becca!) quickly turns a bit odd as she begins to overly concern herself with Sara’s whereabouts and well-being. Rebecca’s obsessions continue to escalate with “familiar” stalker movie elements like memorizing her roommate’s schedule, popping up at the strangest times, scaring off Sara’s other friends, and adopting Sara’s tastes and faves. She even mistreats a poor helpless animal like in SWF. But Rebecca’s stalking never appears creepy or edgy enough because Meester isn’t able to pull off the effect. Morphing from a grin to a pout on camera should never be mistaken for a disturbing dip into a dark psychosis. To her credit though, she’s not really given much to work with. Even so, her Rebecca comes off as a really annoying weirdo girl you’d try to avoid rather than a dangerous psychopath. Jennifer Jason Leigh did it so much better by adding a certain bawdy trashiness to her character -- something that The Roommate‘s PG-13 rating likely hinders somewhat.

Christiansen doesn’t go without blame here either. It becomes blatantly obvious he lacks rapport with his actors. Admittedly, I’m not familiar with Kelly’s work on TV’s Friday Night Lights, but word has it she’s a pretty tough cookie there and pulls it off quite well. However, here she’s just an airheaded valley girl who’s never able to sell us on her love for fashion, her romance with fratboy Stephen (Cam Gigandet), or her ridiculously slow realization that her roommate is a total nut job. And Meester seems completely lost with her schizo Rebecca. Let’s not even get into the back-story that’s supposed to explain why Rebecca is the way she is. Then there’s Gigandet who must not have been told that told that incessant squinting and smirking into the camera isn’t endearing. It’s just annoying.

It’s tempting to just blow it all off and say it’s impossible to make a creepy PG-13 movie. But many have done it, namely Raimi’s 2009 Drag Me to Hell, as did The Others from a few years back. Tremors, The Ring, and The Sixth Sense also did it to varying degrees as well. But Christiansen, deprived of gore and overt violence that might spark a bit of interest, doesn’t know where to go other than to resort to the well-worn PG-13 horror clichés… like loud noises, choppy editing that obscures what’s really going on, a quickly placed hand on the shoulder from behind, or a dead character who suddenly rises to inflict one final blow. PG-13 or not, it’s all lazy filmmaking to me.

It certainly couldn’t have saved this disastrous waste of film stock, but perhaps a signature style or even some kind of trendy camera technique might have added something visually interesting to the proceedings. But as it is, the film ends up looking dreadful as well as being boring and lifeless.

(Released by Screen Gems and rated "PG-13" for violence and menace, sexual content, some language and teen partying.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.