El penthouse

Having seen the original movie 'Loft' by Erik Van Looy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0926762/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), I was hoping for a fresh take. But a fresh take is obviously not why they hired the same Van Looy to direct this version. This is essentially the same movie, just without subtitles.

In short, the building blocks of 'The Loft' are a set of plot twists. They are mostly silly, suffering from a few red herrings that hurt the story's credibility, but it's still entertaining to watch them unfold. Largely because the movie flows well for the most part, with only a few dull moments in the first half.

Although I preferred the exterior design of the original loft, the overall cinematography of 'The Loft' feels a little warmer and more comfortable. Only a little though, because the characters in it are stone cold. James Marsden is the warmest character in the frame, but like everybody else he doesn't get enough to work with to make for a convincing character that the audience can identify with. The characters are The Loft's biggest flaw (as they were in the original), which is especially disappointing since making you care about characters has often been a strong and successful focus in Bart de Pauw's earlier scripts. There are just too many of them, and as a consequence most of the dialog in the back story scenes is expositional and feels awkward. There's never an opportunity for development. The characters are just there to lead you from one twist to the next.

The overall acting suffers as a result. Strangely I felt that Rhona Mitra, with barely any screen time, delivers one of the better performances, with obvious anger below her coldness, yet just enough restrain. Wentworth Miller does what he does best. He doesn't seem to care much, but still feels like a good fit, even with the little information we get for his character. Matthias Schoenaerts' presence is undeniable. But as a guy who seems to be on edge pretty much all the time, his marriage seems plainly unlikely, and his past couldn't be revealed more clumsily. Still, he's a welcome contrast to the otherwise held back main cast. It's a pity that he was clearly suffering from sickness or fatigue in a few scenes, where it's blatantly obvious how much he had to strain his voice. It's arguably suiting his character, but it's still distracting.

The concept of this story lends itself to a much darker movie, and this just feels like a missed opportunity. I can't help but wonder how this would've worked as a film noir. You have five characters that could easily be despicable and instantly more interesting, and the women couldn't be more fatale. Of course, film noir doesn't sell anymore, so instead we get a bright and shiny thriller that doesn't thrill, that keeps you guessing, but doesn't make you ask questions. It deals with edgy themes, but it barely skims them and focuses on polish instead.

7/10. It's definitely an enjoyable watch, but only for people who're into the whole whodunit thing. Not if you're looking for anything more. It's successful at what it is and doesn't pretend to be anything else, but I can't help but sense the potential for something more.

From the opening moments of 'The Loft' you can guess pretty much exactly what you're in for. A "whodunnit" mystery with plentiful twists, where not everything is as it seems. Knowing that much doesn't hurt a film at all. In fact it makes the next couple of hours something to be very much looked forward to - or at least for me it does. You could say the format of the genre is lacking in originality, but you could rarely say two films are the same and anyone who says they saw the ending coming is almost always lying or exaggerating a fleeting suspicious they had. This is why I love mystery-thrillers.

'The Loft' is a fun watch - nothing more, nothing less. It achieves exactly what it sets out to. The 5 lead actors were all pretty solid and gave credible performances. I think I will always see Eric Stonestreet as his brilliant character from 'Modern Family', so I struggled a bit at first to take him seriously in his role here, but he's good enough of an actor to get past that. The dialogue was tightly written and every detail that could otherwise have been questioned was covered well. The only fault I could find was the score sometimes drowning out the dialogue which can be annoying in a film like this where you are trying to catch every spoken detail. Altogether though a fine movie.

I have a couple of questions after watching The Loft. The first one is why some people don't like this movie? If you wanted to watch a mystery thriller then this is what you got. There's no way in hell you could see the end coming. That's what makes a mystery thriller standing out from the rest. A good story with some twists you don't see coming. My second question is why do we need to remake a movie that has been made before and even better? I saw the Belgian version of 2008 before and even if it is the exact copy of this version the original was even better. So why spending all that money on a movie that already exists? Just put some subtitles under the Belgian version and you got an even better movie. Saves you money and time. And if you watched this version of The Loft to see Matthias Schoenaerts play in it than you could have watched the original version as well because he plays in both movies. That must be a premiere I think. Anyways, even though I preferred the original version I still think this one was also good. Good story with good twists and with a good cast. What else do you want on a movie night?

We have five men, all approaching middle-age and hungering for their inconsequential days of drinking and screwing anything in sight. They are Vince (Karl Urban), a married architect, Luke (Wentworth Miller), a married diabetic who finds himself going along with his friends more often than not, Chris (James Marsden), a married psychiatrist, Marty (Eric Stonestreet), a married, loudmouth alcoholic, and Phillip (Matthias Schoenaerts), Chris's married half-brother. In efforts to try and replicate those days, Vince gives each of his pals a key to a loft in a building he designed. There are only five keys made for this particular room, which mimics the design of a lavish presidential suite. Here, the men can unleash their wildest fantasies and never worry about getting caught. It isn't until Luke ventures up to the loft to find a nude woman murdered and handcuffed to the bed of the loft that things begin to unravel. With this, the men begin to reveal to each other, and their spouses, their intentions and their ugly path of adultery.

I'm always up for a good erotic thriller and Erik Van Looy's The Loft is serviceable genre-fare, by that standard. Van Looy apparently felt the story was significant enough to warrant a Dutch-language, Belgian adaptation in 2008 before working on this American version in 2011. Despite being shot in the summer of 2011, the film went through a shift in distributors when the head of Dark Castle Entertainment at Warner Bros. moved offices to Universal. After that, he sat on the film, choosing to release other projects and keep The Loft on the shelf until releasing it with minimal promotion during the dumping ground month of January 2015 in America.

On that basis alone, in addition to being an erotic thriller, a generally tough sell, the American version of The Loft is destined to bear some obscurity in future years. However, what makes this genre work is the elements of sexiness and contempt, which this film has in mass amounts. The erotic flare in Nicolas Karakatsanis's cinematography, heavy on the lavish details and the red textures, and John Frizzell's equal parts sensual and ominous score really make The Loft work for its genre. The contempt element comes in when we realize just how unlikable all of the characters are here. When we are lead down a path of twists and turns, most of which clearly written by the writing team of Bart De Pauw and Wesley Strick, it's clear we cannot trust any of these characters and that makes the experience that much more intriguing.

The Loft, however, has its own share of shortcomings, most of which come in the acting department. Without a doubt, for a mainstream release, this has some of the shakiest acting I have seen in quite sometime. James Marsden constantly feels awkward, giving a deer-in-headlights-esque performance throughout the entire film. His lines delivery carries a certain wooden quality, and isn't assisted by the likes of Urban or Miller, both of whom have their own share of overacting as well. Probably the film's most animated is Stonestreet, given his roly-poly nature, but the acting here brings the film down significant notches, especially in the more climactic sequences.

Furthermore, the downside of there being no likable characters makes it inevitably difficult to care what happens to anyone by the end of the film. While the element of distrust works wonders for the ability to resonate with characters in a film, it makes the outcome less impacting because you find yourself not rooting for anyone in the long run - not even an antihero but a series of unreliable, contemptible souls.

The Loft takes an underrated territory that finds itself charted less and less in the current day and tries to invoke it with some sort of life and substance. While it succeeds aesthetically, it's disappointing on a character level and on an acting level as well. The efforts to get this film a release in America likely wasn't worth the laborious process and the agonizing wait for a release.

Starring: James Marsden, Karl Urban, Wentworth Miller, Eric Stonestreet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Isabel Lucas, Rhona Mitra, and Rachael Taylor.

I was surprised how good this film was. I usually figure out who done its before the reveal but I didn't with this one. It can be a bit confusing jumping around from past and present but that adds to the mystery. Its a smart movie and we don't get those that often. Performances are good- most actors seemed to be a bit out of their typical roles. Wentworth Miller was very different from Prison Break and its nice to see Karl Urban break away from SciFi/Fantasy franchises. Eric Stonestreet was very different from his TV role and James Mardsen showed the conflict of someone going against their norm. Also, it was nice to have a movie this length- not so long its hard to stand up when the film is done. Its a shame the studio didn't really back it and do any advertising. I never saw a TV spot- just a preview. They also kept pushing back the release date. Its a shame this one will just probably fade into DVD obscurity because its good and entertaining.