Netflix And Chill: Roommates (2026)

I have said it many times before, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with a movie not being quite what you expect it to be. In fact, a number of movies have been greatly appreciated by many because of their defiance of expectations, for want of a better phrase. Roommates isn't the film I expected it to be, fair enough, but it's also not good when it is being the film it actually is. Which left me quite disappointed.

Things start with a fight between dorm roommates Luna (Storm Reid) and Auguste (Ivy Wolk). The fight is so bad that Dr. Robyn Schilling (Sarah Sherman) intervenes, deciding to offer them a valuable lesson in the form of a tale about Devon Weisz (Sadie Sandler) and Celeste Durand (Chloe East). Devon hopes that college life will be a big improvement on her school years, and that looks possible when she meets, and becomes instant firm friends with, Celeste. It's not long until a few warning flags appear, however, and the expected smooth cruise through college turns into a very bumpy journey indeed.

Written by Jimmy Fowlie and Ceara O'Sullivan, two people who have some shared work on roughly 60 episodes of SNL, this is a film that works better when the writers remember to have some funny dialogue in between the more dramatic moments. It also works better when there's some ambiguity. Unfortunately, both of those elements are missing when the film needs it most, instead relying on Sandler and East to carry viewers through the entire movie. They're not up to that task.

I'm not familiar with anything else from director Chandler Levack, but this certainly hasn't convinced me to rectify that situation in any great hurry. She seems to have been picked by Adam Sandler to help advance the separate career of a daughter who has spent the majority of the past two decades picking up credits for smaller roles in her father's films. That's certainly a job, I guess, but it's not one that everyone would be happy with.

The big stumbling block here IS Sandler. She delivers an eye-rolling bit of "teen angst" that would be fine in a smaller supporting role, but doesn't work well for a lead character. She's not a terrible performer. She's just not good enough for a role that needs someone much better in it to make up for the failings elsewhere in the film. East does a bit better, but she suffers more at the hands of the writers, especially once the film reaches the halfway point. Natasha Lyonne and Nick Kroll are very welcome as a pair of decent parents, Carol Kane is a delight as the grandmother, Gigi, and there are entertaining cameos from Janeane Garofalo and Megan Thee Stallion. Aidan Langford is pretty good as Devon's supportive brother, and Billy Bryk and Martin Herlihy do quite well playing two very different types of loser. As for Sherman, Reid, and Wolk, they're weak enough to make their few scenes together even worse than anything in the main narrative being presented.

A drama presented in the form of a comedy, but also trying to play everything in the same light and inconsequential way as many other Happy Madison films, Roommates could have been a film of simple pleasures. Some may admire it for trying to do something else. I cannot. It doesn't really seem to know exactly what it wants to do, and subsequently fails to do anything worthwhile.

3/10

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Heretic (2024)

There's been an interesting trend in recent years for some horror movies to base themselves around the idea of social awkwardness/embarrassment. Maybe it was always there, to some degree anyway, but we've had recent films giving us horror that stems from two separate people accidentally being booked in to the same Airbnb, holiday friends who astoundingly take up the offer of an invite to spend more time together when the reality should have been to immediately lose contact once they were back in their respective homes, and now, and maybe worst of all, answering your door to people who are aiming to educate you on their religion.

Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East are, respectively, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, two young Mormon  women who end up knocking on the door of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). Mr. Reed welcomes them inside and is delighted to have a conversation with them, but it's not long until the women suspect that all is not quite right. They want to leave as soon as possible, which goes against their usual mindset. Mr. Reed has plenty that he wants to discuss though, and maybe even one or two sights to show them.

Co-written and co-directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic was one of a number of horror movies to receive no small amount of praise from people in 2024. While I'm happy to see it so praised, and while a number of aspects deserve it, I have to say that I'm a bit puzzled by the amount of people who seemed to recommend it without a couple of important caveats.

So here are a couple of important caveats. Heretic really has to work hard to maintain any sense of plausibility as the central characters remain in one location for most of the runtime. It doesn't quite succeed, but that only becomes a problem until things take a more serious, arguably more genre-leaning, turn. Then everything gets quite interesting and fun again, right up until we have to endure a final 10 minutes that almost undoes all of the previous good work. Almost.

When it comes to the conversation between the three main characters in the first half of the movie, this is fantastic. Grant gets to relish every sentence and carefully-chosen word, moving from harmless and lonely old man to someone who seems more dangerous and predatory with every subsequent chess move against people who believe they are playing chequers, and both Thatcher and East eventually work hard on their rebuttals to the arguments that he makes. Then comes the motivation though, which is where the film falls down, and then you have to watch one apparently far-fetched incident after another, with writers Beck and Woods happy to throw in coincidences and ridiculousness in whatever way best serves themselves in their directorial capacity.

The performances are the saving grace. Thatcher and East do really well in their roles, fighting hard to present themselves as more than just paper-thin caricatures. Grant is given the best seat at the table though, and starts chomping his way through every scene as if he's just been served a huge platter of all of his favourite foods. I have always been a big fan of Grant, even when he was making his millions as the floppy-haired rom-com charmer, but it's undeniable that he's been doing some great work, and clearly having much more fun, in the past decade than when he first shot to stardom. His turn here is another in a steady stream of absolutely brilliant and entertaining performances that have made him a scene-stealing highlight in the films that have made use of him lately. There aren't really any other people worth mentioning, aside from Topher Grace (who has just one or two minutes of screentime), but that's no big loss when the three leads are so good.

I really enjoyed Heretic, despite what my criticisms here may have led you to believe, but I really enjoyed it because of the first half and the work of the leads. I was disappointed by the ending, but at least it tried to do something interesting. I'd still highly recommend the whole thing though, but with caveats.

7/10

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The Fabelmans (2022)

A Steven Spielberg film, directed and co-written by him (with Tony Kushner, his regular collaborator over the past few years), and based on his life. The Fabelmans is, unsurprisingly, a film about falling in love with cinema, about how movies can reveal uncomfortable truths, and how people can be manipulated by the magic of movies. The surprising thing is that the film itself stops far short of greatness.

Gabriel LaBelle plays Sammy Fabelman (after Mateo Zoryan has depicted him as an even younger child), a young man who turns his passion for movies into a life-changing hobby that we all know will turn into a hugely successful career. His parents are played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, and there’s a friendly “uncle” (not actually related, just named as such as a term of endearment) played by Seth Rogen. There are other family members, but they’re background players, especially throughout a second half that shows Sammy being bullied by Logan Hall (Sam Rechner) and Chad Thomas (Oakes Fegley).

Very traditional in the way it all plays out, The Fabelmans is a nice film. Even the darker plot points (family issues, the antisemitism/bullying) are handled with great care, every main sequence more about appreciating the power of movies than it is about anything else. That’s to be expected, I guess, but it leaves you with a film that somehow feels less insightful than the excellent documentary on Spielberg from a few years ago. As Sammy immerses himself into movies and movie-making, viewers may find it far too easy to keep in mind that Spielberg is keeping himself well within his comfort zone. Even things that surely caused him pain in his life are made safer, more palatable, by his ability to put them in a movie, and that observation is spoken aloud within the film.

The cast all do a good job, with Dano and Williams real standouts. The former gives one of his typically restrained and controlled turns, in line with his good-hearted, but somewhat dull, character, and the latter gets to shine like the brightest star in the sky, her light casting a glow on the loving faces of the men in her life. LaBelle is a perfect stand-in for young Spielberg, Rechner is pretty good, and Fegley is a worryingly effective Chad, if you know what I mean. Chad’s gonna Chad. Chloe East and Isabelle Kusman have fun as two teenage girls who befriend our lead after a particularly rough encounter with his bullies, but their relative insignificance, compared to the affirmation he ends up getting from those who watch his films, feels as depressing as it is (probably) accurate.

The very end scene will leave many people smiling, but it’s the only moment that hints at how much better the whole thing could have been. It’s harder to join in with a celebration when some people are sobbing, and there’s only so much work that a John Williams score can do.

Slightly misjudged, slightly self-indulgent, slightly too . . . well, slight, The Fabelmans is still a good film, and Spielberg absolutely deserves to treat himself with this cinematic retelling of his youth, but it’s kind of like knowing how a magic trick works. You can still appreciate the skill, but you’ll never be as impressed and entertained as you were before you knew the mechanics of it.

7/10

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The Wolf Of Snow Hollow (2020)

Remember the excellent Thunder Road, the film from Jim Cummings that gained him a lot of love, and fans, just a couple of years ago. It was all about a cop trying to keep his head, and his job, while grieving and going through some turbulence in his personal life. Cummings was excellent as the director, writer, and star. And he's equally good here, in a film that walks a surprisingly similar path, while adding an element of potential lyncathropy.

Cummings is John Marshall, a police officer who is working under the extra strain of trying to ensure his father, the Sheriff (Robert Forster), gives himself time to get the right medical treatment that he needs. Marshall is also about to take custody of his teenage daughter (Jenna, played by Chloe East), attends meetings for issues with alcohol, and things go from bad to worse when horribly mauled dead bodies start turning up in his small town. People start to speculate that it could be a werewolf, considering the damage and the fact that there was a full moon, but Marshall thinks that idea is ridiculous.

Once again deftly mixing comedy and drama, but with an added dash of horror this time, Cummings effectively uses The Wolf Of Snow Hollow to slightly push out the boundary line of his comfort zone. So much of this is familiar to those who enjoyed his previous feature, yet the one brand new additional ingredient allows it to feel a step or two removed from just being a retread.

Having said that, the horror of the premise is often left to just provide an undercurrent to the standard tensions and headaches for the small-town police force. I wouldn't want to whole-heartedly recommend this to someone wanting scares or a full-blooded werewolf movie, but I would definitely encourage anyone and everyone to at least give it a go. It's a wonderfully quirky and entertaining blend of Silver Bullet, Thunder Road, and Fargo, so you should know already if there's enough here to keep you amused.

Cummings is once again a perfect fit for his lead role, and manages to keep viewers onside with a character who is essentially quite inept and obstinate at times. Riki Lindhome is just as good in the main supporting role, Officer Julia Robson, and Forster is given a number of little moments that feel sadly fitting for one of his final roles. East is very good as the teen daughter dealing with a difficult relationship with her father, and both Jimmy Tatro and Daniel Fenton Anderson are highlights, the former a partner of the first victim and the latter a grumpy coroner.

I had already seen a decent amount of love for this before getting to it myself, which was a good sign, but it's hard to think of who will enjoy it the most. I think you just have to go into it as a film fan, first and foremost, and forget all about any genre labels. Which I know is the best way to go into any film, but we all know that rarely happens.

8/10

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