Lin Shaye's been in so many bad movies throughout her career that it's pretty commonplace to see claims she's being wasted, but sometimes she does perform at the level of the crap she's in. Case in point: "Room for Rent", director Tommy Stovall's slow-burn stinker about recently-widowed Joyce (Shaye), who starts renting rooms in her house and naturally becomes obsessed with the first attractive man (Oliver Rayon) to enter the fray. You know it's all gonna go tits up eventually -- especially when author Sarah (Valeska Miller, giving the movie's only good performance) becomes entangled in Joyce's one-way idea of domestic bliss -- but the getting there is pretty dull and just when the movie feels like it might be arriving at its most explosive point it ends. Along the way there's a couple of anticlimactic kills and a not-quite-vintage Shaye performance to put up with, but precious little excitement or interest. Maybe if Joyce was a bit more of a Dorothea Puerta kind of landlady and the movie less sedate, it might have worked. As is, even at 80 minutes it's a bit of a slog.
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