As initially inseparable roomies undone by envy and exploitation, Sadie Sandler and Chloe East give Chandler Levack's Netflix film a ring of emotional truth even when it spirals into silliness.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection There’s a complicated, bittersweet study of female friendship fighting to free itself from the glib, shiny, “Saturday Night Live”-adjacent comic veneer of “Roommates,” and when it shows through, in enticing fits and starts, it even approaches wisdom. Elsewhere, however, this Netflix original from up-and-coming Canadian filmmaker Chandler Levack disappointingly flattens the moral and emotional zigzags of an increasingly toxic college roommate situation, losing nuance as it seeks to appoint one of its leads a heroine and the other a villain. Both, happily, are played far more interestingly — by Sadie Sandler and Chloe East — than this binary might suggest, and the film that “Roommates” might have been mostly lives in their nervy, careering performances.
Related Stories
