The Loft

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.

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.

.. a movie that's far more entertaining than most of the crap produced these days.

Really nice acting, cringe-worthy characters (in a good way) played by talented & believable actors with a nice suspenseful/thrilling plot. I honestly thought I would hate it when I started watching it on BluRay, but wow, I sat through it all without even taking a bathroom break.

Not going to spoil anything, except for the fact that this movie is another reason why the so called "critics" should not be listened to.

Oh and watch it with your wife for the best experience.

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?

"The Loft" is a remake of a Belgian film, and focuses on five married men who go in on a ritzy high rise loft for the purposes of pursuing their affairs and sexual escapades. When a girl winds up dead in a pool of blood in the loft, the five men panic as they attempt to unravel who she is and where she came from.

Taking some cues from Hitchcock (and not exactly with a fraction of Hitch's poise), "The Loft" is an overall entertaining film, but the script at times is the equivalent of a cheap Rubik's cube— it looks fine, it's a fun puzzle, I guess, but it's really just not that impressive overall.

The film shifts between past and present, unraveling the narrative through flashbacks which are sandwiched between the current dilemma of the four men arguing in the loft over the corpse of the dead blonde. The pacing is a bit choppy, and the transitions rather abrupt. James Marsden and Wentworth Miller are among the film's greatest star power here, but the cast overall is really underwhelming, and the performances are at times borderline campy as the men play up their roles as buffoonish plutocratic mattress hounds.

The finale cements my feelings of the film as an underwhelming thriller that seems more suited for television than the silver screen, but I still can't say it was totally not worth the time. In spite of the hammy performances, the disjointed narrative, and the overall sensibility of utter lifelessness that the film has, it is still by and large an entertaining flick. Nearly impossible to take seriously, but for entertainment's sake, it's passable. 5/10.