Roommates

The Uncomfortable Laugh: How Roommates Turns Friendship Into a Contact Sport

I’ve seen this movie twice now, and both times I’ve left the theater (well, my couch) with the same uneasy feeling: I laughed a lot, but I’m not sure I should have. Roommates, Chandler Levack’s chaotic dorm-room comedy, is the kind of film that thrives on discomfort—specifically, the kind that comes from watching two people who are supposed to be friends treat each other like emotional landmines. It’s funny until it isn’t, and then it’s funny again, and then you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be rooting for anyone at all.

That ambiguity is the film’s greatest strength and its most frustrating flaw. Levack, whose previous work (I Like Movies) proved she has a sharp eye for the awkward rhythms of young adulthood, here turns a college dorm into a pressure cooker of passive aggression, where every shared glance and half-hearted text message carries the weight of a declaration of war. The setup is simple: Devon (Sadie Sandler), a shy freshman, asks the effortlessly cool Celeste (Chloe East) to be her roommate, only to discover that Celeste’s idea of friendship involves treating Devon’s boundaries like suggestions.

What starts as a series of petty annoyances—Celeste eating Devon’s food, borrowing her clothes without asking, inviting strangers into their room at 3 a.m.—escalates into full-blown psychological warfare, complete with public humiliation, emotional blackmail, and, in the film’s most infamous sequence, a dorm fire that feels less like a climax and more like the logical endpoint of two people who’ve forgotten how to communicate.

The film’s first act is a masterclass in cringe comedy, the kind that makes you wince and laugh in the same breath. Levack nails the specific horrors of freshman year—the way every social interaction feels like a high-stakes negotiation, the way your roommate’s habits (the snoring, the late-night phone calls, the mysterious stains on the carpet) can start to feel like personal affronts.

Sandler and East are both excellent here, with Sandler playing Devon as a tightly wound ball of anxiety whose every micro-expression betrays her growing resentment, while East’s Celeste is all effortless charm and barely concealed condescension. Their dynamic is so believable that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a scripted comedy; these are the kinds of people you’ve known, or maybe even been.

But then the film takes a turn. What begins as a sharp, grounded character study starts to veer into the realm of the absurd, and not always in a good way. The dorm fire, for instance, is played for laughs—Celeste accidentally sets their room ablaze while trying to make grilled cheese at 4 a.m.—but the tonal whiplash is jarring.