by Christine O’Connell ‘11

As a senior in my final semester, I can honestly say that I’m more than thrilled to start my new life in college. Beside that fact that I can get out of Olney, I can meet interesting types of people and learn how to live on my own. However, with the excitement also comes anxiety of wondering what the people I meet will be like. Will they be friendly or stuck-up? Cool or nerdy? Crazy in a good way or psychotic?

In the movie, “The Roommate,” directed by Christian E. Christiansen, the main character Sara Matthews worries about a disturbed, possessive roommate that puts her safety in jeopardy just to have Sara all to herself. This is the roommate that seriously takes the cake as the worst nightmare of many incoming college freshmen.

The film, which opened February 4, stars Minka Kelly as Sara and Leighton Meester as the psycho roommate Rebecca. Kelly is best known for her role on the hit TV show “Friday Night Lights.” However, Meester is the one that truly transformed for this role.

Meester plays Blair Waldorf in the popular TV show “Gossip Girl,” which is based off of a successful book series. As Blair, Meester is a privileged teen socialite living in the Big Apple with a catty attitude and a flair for getting what she wants. But in “The Roommate,” she has to play a much darker role as a girl with mental issues and a tendency to scare many people away, which is why she did everything in her power to make sure that no one got in the way of her being friends with Sara.

Aside from the high-quality acting from both Kelly and Meester, and an appearance from a “Twilight” star (Cam Gigandet plays Sara’s boyfriend in the film), the movie fails at the most basic requirement of scaring the audience. I only jumped out of my seat once during the entire 93 minutes (which is certainly saying something because I get scared easily).

If the movie wasn’t so predictable, it would have been much scarier and probably worth spending seven dollars on. And then there is the fact that this film has already been done before. The 1992 film “Single White Female” tells a similar story about a young woman whose roommate is actually a murderer with a dark past. The writers of “The Roommate” just changed the setting and a few minor details to try and spruce up the older film but in turn ruined a perfectly fine movie. If you are going to copy a movie, you have to go above and beyond the previous one to deserve any kind of praise. However, Christiansen did not do enough with the material that he was given to make a great thriller. To be fair, watching the movie with about 50 annoying tweens who liked to loudly add their own commentary did not help the movie’s chances with me.

As I venture onto the unknown world called college, I will not be afraid of meeting new people or living with a stranger because of this bad remake that made it even more unlikely to become friends with a psycho-killer.