Review The Roommate | poetslandscape

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (L) Roger Ebert () Fr Dennis (3 ? Stars)

IMDb Listing - http://www.Imdb.Com/perceive/tt1265990/

CNS/USCCB Review -

http://www.Usccb.Org/movies/r/roommate2011.Shtml

Roger Ebert?S Review -

?Says proper here that if he is taking all his meds, he?S excellent.?

?What if he doesn?T take his meds??

?Well, I bet he wouldn?T be excellent.?

? From the movie ?Wag the Dog?

The Roommate is a film that virtually isn?T supposed for absolutely everyone over 25. It?S sincerely that I grew-up (became a teen/university pupil) in the heyday of the mad-slasher flicks of the past due-70s early-80s and I?M gonna deliver myself a bypass ;-).

And then movies like this are continuously fun to research. What makes a horror movie paintings? Well, Stephen King, a real grasp of this fashion, writes in his e-book The Danse Macabre that the movie has to the touch a nerve. That is, the film has to tap right right into a fear/anxiety that exists within the society, and the more the concern/anxiety being tapped, the extra a success the film.

We stay in a time at the same time as tens of tens of thousands and thousands of people, regularly younger human beings, are on psychiatric mediation for all types of ailments from the very intense (schizophrenia) to the plenty less essential but frequently debilitating (depression) and the question/tension does get up: Who amongst those human beings clearly wishes those medicines (and wouldn?T be capable of characteristic appropriately without them)? And then what kind of dangers stand up when they don?T take these meds well? We additionally live in a time whilst there?S ever developing pressure to get a university diploma. As such, folks that a era inside the beyond might have been satisfied, effective citizens within the trades, doing line work at a manufacturing facility and/or actually being married are actually being pressured to visit university, wherein they'll be in reality out in their intensity. Finally, we live in a time whilst each yr there seems to be a mass taking pics at a university (Virginia Tech, N.I.U.) or one perpetrated by means of manner of a bothered university pupil (much like the recent mass capturing in Tuscon), in which a not unusual denominator has been that the culprit in query turn out to be average or below commonplace at school and if there have been different alternatives won't had been going to university in any respect.

So the developing commonality of psychiatric medicinal tablets and the pressures to go to college shape the subtexts to The Roommate.

As a slasher film, The Roommate then follows conventions that every person who become a youngster within the late-70s / early 80s could apprehend. A

Innovations on the conventions of the 1970s-80s “mad slasher” flick include the following:

First, The Roommate is rated PG-13 (as opposed to the “R” ratings of most of the 1970s/80s era flicks) so the “body count” in the movie is actually quite low and “the gore” is at a minimum. This is probably smart because movies like this have TEEN written all over them and it makes no sense making the movies “R-rated” and thus needlessly encouraging “rule breaking” by teens and causing moral dilemmas to parents.

Second, the “good girl” Sara is _no longer_ a virgin. In the movie, she does sleep with her "angelic boyfriend" and doesn’t particularly mind the antics of the “slutty” Tracy. Interestingly enough, another recent horror movie Drag Me to Hell actually plays on this exact point very well – should we really identify with / feel sorry for the “good girl” when she’s no longer particularly “good.” Yes, one can be “sweet” but is that really being “good?” I LOVED Drag me to Hell and consider it the best horror movie in a generation and of the caliber of Psycho and the The Exorcist, but that’s another story ... ;-). However, in The Roommate, Sara retains archtypical “good” qualities. She may put-up with/forgive Tracy’s promiscuity but she herself isn’t. She’s more or less monogamous. Her high school boyfriend dumped her, but then she’s loyal to her new "angelic" college boyfriend. She resists the come-ons of others who would hit on her. Perhaps most controversially, Sara doesn’t engage in lesbianism, portrayed briefly in the movie (PARENTS take note ...) in _decidedly deviant tones_. Actually, the mad slasher flicks of the 1970s/80s had a decidedly “conservative tone” when it came to sexual morality as well – the “slutty”/promiscuous always met bad ends.

Finally, the “monster,” Rebecca, was female. That’s actually surprising given both that the "monsters" in the 1970s/80s mad slasher flicks were generally male (Jason, Freddy Krueger, etc) and the perpetrators of the recent shootings at universities were _always male_. The monster being female, however, serves to soften the movie. Often in the past, it was understood that the “monster” had “a story” as well. I think it’s easier to identify with “the story” of a troubled female than a male. Further making “the monster” female helped provide sufficient distance between _the movie_ and the horrific _reality_ of the recent school shootings. Finally, the choice of making the monster female helped the producers of the film to keep the movie’s “body count” at a manageable level for both the PG-13 rating and audience acceptance.

The trajectory of the plot of The Roommate is straight out of the conventions of the 1970s/80s movies of its kind. After introduction to the cast of characters and giving the audience time to make moral assessments of them, the “monster” goes to work destroying the guilty. A final confrontation comes between the “the Good Girl” (in the 1970s/80s “The Virgin”) and “the Monster.” The "angelic boyfriend" is a help but ultimately it is up to the “Good Girl”/”Virgin” to defeat the "monster" herself.

THAT “THE VIRGIN” WOULD VANQUISH “THE MONSTER” IS STRAIGHT OUT OF VERY TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC MARIOLOGY, where it is the Woman (Mary) who destroys the Serpent “crushing his head with her heal” (Gen 3,15). Pretty much every single “slasher” movie of the 1970s/80s used the same formula. The formula was most clearly seen in the first Terminator movie, where the Monster (the Terminator) being a modern day incarnation of “the Dragon” of Revelation 12 sent “to destroy the future savior of the world” is vanquished in the final scene when the heroine, _carrier_ of the future savior of the world, Sarah (again with a Biblical name) crushes the head of the Terminator (who’s lost his legs (becoming like a Serpent) but still grabbing at her feet), doing so by _kicking on a mechanical press_, which does the crushing job for her.  Note, I evern wrote an article about The Marian imagery in the Terminator movie soon after finishing the Seminary.

In the case of The Roommate, the new Sara doesn’t destroy the monster by crushing her head, but vanquishes her in a manner that’s so obviously stylized/symbolic that it pays homage to the formula again, if carried out in a slightly different way. You can’t do the exact same thing over and over again ... some variation is fair, even if the same basic formula is used.

Anyway, The Roommate is a great ride. Like every successful horror movie, it helps express fears/anxieties that certainly do exist in our society today. And the movie plays out using a classic formula at least as old as the New Testament. I wouldn’t recommend the movie to young kids. Some parents will have issues with some of the sexual portrayals in the movie, though no nudity is shown. Overall, as I said at the beginning, the movie has TEEN and COLLEGE STUDENT written all over it.

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