Angela Bettis’ Roman (2006) is one of those odd little films that slipped under most radars, landed in the horror bargain bin, and yet still managed to carve out a small cult audience. It’s a character study disguised as horror, a love story buried under a body bag, and a black comedy about the sort of man you’d cross the street to avoid—and yet can’t quite stop watching. Written by and starring Lucky McKee, with Kristen Bell and Nectar Rose in key roles, it’s an intimate, grimy, and weirdly tender portrait of one man’s descent into obsession and despair. It’s horror with a wink, tragedy with a smirk, and the kind of indie cinema that makes you feel like you need a shower afterwards. In other words: pretty great.
Lonely Hearts Club (Membership: 1)
Roman, played by Lucky McKee himself, is not your conventional horror “monster.” He’s not masked, not stalking co-eds with a machete, not cackling in the shadows. No—he’s worse. He’s ordinary. He’s the kind of guy who works at a factory, comes home to an empty apartment, and stares just a second too long at the neighbors in the hall. The sort of guy you don’t invite to happy hour because he’ll bring a pamphlet about welding rods.
His life is beige, his joys are microscopic, and his one burning passion is the beautiful young woman in his building, played by Kristen Bell. She’s everything he’s not: vibrant, attractive, a splash of color in his otherwise black-and-white existence. He watches her from a distance, the way other people watch TV reruns—comfort food for the lonely. This isn’t love; it’s obsession. But the way McKee plays it, you can’t help but see a cracked reflection of human longing.
Kristen Bell: The Angel and the Accident
Kristen Bell’s character, Isis, is less a fully fleshed-out person than she is the embodiment of every lonely man’s fantasy. And that’s the point. Roman projects all his need, his hunger, and his desperation onto her, and when fate (and by fate, I mean an awkward invitation gone horribly sideways) gives him the chance to connect, he implodes.
What happens next—well, let’s just say it doesn’t end with wedding bells. A moment of violent panic ends Isis’ life, and suddenly Roman’s obsession becomes a corpse in his living room. Kristen Bell, for all her brief screen time, nails the performance: she radiates enough warmth and charm that you understand Roman’s fixation, and when she dies, you feel the void widen in his world. It’s the kind of performance that makes you mourn not just the character, but the hole left in the narrative.
Meet Eva: Love in a Hopeless Place
Enter Eva, played by Nectar Rose, the neighbor who barges into Roman’s life with the kind of chaotic energy you’d expect from someone who’d actually consider dating a guy like him. Eva is eccentric, offbeat, messy—and unlike Isis, she sees Roman. Or at least, she sees the wounded, awkward shell he presents to the world.
Their relationship is the cracked heart of the film: two damaged people colliding in a stew of need, secrecy, and grotesque romance. Rose plays Eva with just enough charm and volatility to make you wonder if she’s rescuing Roman or gleefully jumping into his pit. It’s funny, unsettling, and occasionally sweet—like watching two stray dogs curl up together on a dirty blanket.
Angela Bettis Behind the Camera
It’s worth noting that Roman was directed by Angela Bettis, herself an actor best known for playing May in McKee’s cult film May (2002). There’s an inside-out symmetry here: Bettis, once McKee’s muse, now turns the camera on him, watching him unravel as Roman. She directs with intimacy, letting the camera linger in close quarters, trapping us in Roman’s suffocating apartment. There are no sprawling horror set pieces, no elaborate chase sequences—just claustrophobic spaces where loneliness festers like mold.
Bettis balances horror and dark comedy with a deft touch. She doesn’t romanticize Roman, but she doesn’t cartoonishly vilify him either. Instead, she forces us to sit uncomfortably with him, watching his need metastasize into something monstrous.
Horror in the Mundane
What makes Roman quietly effective is that it doesn’t rely on supernatural gimmicks or slasher clichés. The horror comes from watching someone who might live down the hall unravel. Roman isn’t a demon, he’s just lonely. And loneliness, unchecked, can be terrifying.
The film also leans into gallows humor. Roman’s attempts to hide his crime are clumsy, awkward, and tinged with absurdity. There’s something both horrifying and darkly funny about a man trying to carry on as usual while his reality collapses around him. At times, it feels like a sitcom where the laugh track has been replaced with the sound of a shovel digging in dirt.
Lucky McKee: Writer, Actor, Sad Clown
Lucky McKee’s performance as Roman is the kind of unpolished, uncomfortable work you get when an actor is too close to the material—in the best way. He doesn’t play Roman as a snarling villain; he plays him as a schlub who stumbles into villainy. His hunched posture, hesitant speech, and nervous silences paint the picture of a man shrinking from the world. You almost pity him. Almost.
McKee, who also wrote the script, injects Roman with just enough humor and pathos to make him more than a horror cliché. He’s a man-child grasping for connection, and when he kills, it feels less like malice and more like inevitability. It’s tragic. It’s funny. It’s creepy. It’s the emotional equivalent of stepping in gum.
The Good Kind of Small
Roman isn’t flashy. It’s low-budget, intimate, and rough around the edges. But that’s part of its charm. It feels like an indie horror fable whispered between misfits. The film doesn’t care about jump scares or gore quotas—it cares about character, about the sick joke of human connection.
Sure, the pacing drags in places, and some scenes feel stitched together with duct tape and hope. But when it clicks, it delivers a uniquely unsettling blend of humor and tragedy. It’s the kind of film you remember not for its set pieces, but for its mood: the stale air of Roman’s apartment, the awkward silences, the strange tenderness of Eva’s affection.
Why It Works (Against All Odds)
Looking back, Roman could’ve been a disaster: an actor-turned-writer playing his own creepy creation, directed by his frequent collaborator, shot on a shoestring budget. But somehow, it works. Maybe because Bettis understands McKee’s sensibilities. Maybe because McKee throws himself into the role without vanity. Or maybe because horror, at its best, is about empathy with monsters—and Roman forces you to empathize with a monster who’s really just a man.
It’s funny, too: funny in the way that makes you laugh, then squirm, then check your locks. It’s the rare horror film that doesn’t scare you with ghosts or gore, but with the uncomfortable truth that the scariest thing in the world is a lonely man with no idea what to do with his feelings.
Final Thoughts
Roman (2006) is not for everyone. It’s slow, intimate, and deeply uncomfortable. But it’s also smart, darkly funny, and oddly touching. Angela Bettis directs with a steady hand, Lucky McKee delivers a performance that’s both pathetic and chilling, and Kristen Bell and Nectar Rose bring humanity to roles that could’ve been throwaway archetypes.
In retrospect, it deserves more attention than it got. It’s the anti-blockbuster: a horror film stripped down to loneliness, obsession, and the strange places love can lead us. It’s grotesque, it’s funny, it’s sad—and it’s worth your time.
Verdict: 4 out of 5 red flags you should’ve noticed before dating the guy next door.
