The Roommate Parents Movie Review

movie review rating guide for parents and families

MPAA Rating
PG-13

for violence and menace, sexual content, some language and teen partying

Genre
Crime and Mystery

Director
Christian E. Christiansen

Starring
Leighton Meester, Minka Kelly, Cam Gigandet, Alyson Michalka, Danneel Harris

Studio
Screen Gems

Release Date/In Theaters
02/01/2011

Movie Summary

An unstable college freshman (Leighton Meester) becomes increasingly obsessed with her roommate.

The Roommate Movie Review for Parents

-by Ginger

Going away to college is scary enough, and according to the movie nearly 16 million students will go off to college in the United States every year. Going to college is filled with many stresses. It is often a person’s first time away from home and on his or her own. Part of this experience is learning to get along with someone that you have never known before in your life. Getting your first roommate is exciting and frightening. This stress forms the central idea behind the plot in The Roommate.

Sarah Matthews is assigned a room with someone who appears to be a normal person. Her roommate, Rebecca, goes out of her way to make friends and form close bonds with Sarah. The film gives several clues in the beginning that Rebecca may have motives other than friendship. Sarah becomes the sister that Rebecca always wanted. Little by little the film does a striptease and reveals a little more of Rebecca’s true personality. Sarah begins to think that her roommate may be a little strange. When she begins to investigate, she finds out a little more than she may have wanted to know. What do you do when you find out that your roommate is a psychopath unless she takes her medication?

You guessed it, Rebecca stops taking her medication. Then the film takes on a Fatal Attraction meets Psycho trait. Rebecca tries to cut Sarah off from all of her other friends and becomes so jealous of Sarah’s male relationships that she kills the competition. She tries to control everything in Sarah’s life and isolate her from the rest of society. The movie even has a very familiar shower scene where Rebecca attacks Sarah. I won’t describe what happens next, but let’s just say it’s gruesome.

The MPAA rated this movie PG-13 for violence, menace, and sexual content. The Roommate also has adult language and scenes of teenage partying. Take the advice of this family movie review and don’t take children under the age of 13 to see it. It is simply too disturbing and would be very likely to cause nightmares. I would have to think about allowing even young teens to see this movie, particularly those who are destined to attend college. It does present many realistic aspects of college life that a parent might not wish for them to see as they make a decision on their future. This family movie review suggests caution for any one under the age of 16, even though the content would not suggest making it an R by official standards.