In
preparing to review the new thriller “The Loft,” I was surprised to
discover that not only is it a remake of a 2008 film that was an enormous hit
in its native Belgium, it was previously remade in the Netherlands in
2010–indeed, the film’s director, Erik van Looy, not only helmed the original
but also worked on the Dutch version as well. I am not surprised by the fact
that this story has been told three times in such a short period of time–hey,
the beloved classic “The Maltese Falcon” was actually the third
cinematic go-around for that tale in less than a decade. No, what surprises me
is that I would have thought that by this third stab at this particular
narrative, all of the implausibilities and idiocies would have been ironed out.
Alas, this long-delayed would-be erotic thriller is a shabby bore that promises
viewers any number of kinky thrills and then proceeds to deflate those
expectations.
The film
centers around five pals—smarmy architect Vincent (Karl Urban), nice guy
psychiatrist Chris (James Marsden), quiet nebbish Luke (Wentworth Miller),
loudmouth horndog Marty (Eric Stonestreet) and borderline psychopath/Chris’s
half-brother Philip (Matthias Schoenaerts, another refugee from the Belgian
original)—who are in marriages that are not particularly satisfying to them
for various reasons. Assuming that they all desperately want to cheat on their
wives but are leery of doing for fear of getting caught, Vincent hits upon the
perfect solution—the five of them will quietly purchase a spacious loft
apartment in a new building that he has designed and use it for their assignations.
There are any number of reasons to instantly reject such a proposal as being
impractical at best and idiotic at worst (Who washes the sheets? What happens
if two of them show up at the same time? What if one of them threatens to
blackmail the others in order to get out of his turn doing the dishes?) but
none of them occur to them and they all sign on.
For a
while, all goes well and even the initially reluctant Chris joins in the fun as
well once he meets the sexy Anne (Rachael Taylor), the sister of a former
patient who committed suicide. However, it is all fun and games until someone
dies a horrible death, and indeed, one morning, Luke arrives to discover the
corpse of a strange blonde handcuffed to the bed with her wrist slashed. After
the others arrive, it becomes apparent that since there are only five keys to
the loft, one of them has to have been at least somewhat involved in the girl’s
death. While they try to piece together what happened and who is hiding what,
we are treated to a series of extended flashbacks that reveal more about the
guys, their increasingly twisted relationships with their women and with each
other, the identity of the suicide blonde and the circumstances that presumably
led at least one of them to commit murder.
In other
words, “The Loft” is like a combination of “The Apartment,”
minus the caustic wit and interesting characters, “Reservoir Dogs”
sans the powerful sexual tension and a below-average episode of “Law &
Order SVU.” Actually, that description makes it sound far more interesting
than it actually is. Having never seen the first two versions, I cannot say for
certain how this one compares to its ancestors but either something got
horribly lost in the translation or it the Belgians and Dutch are a lot more
forgiving when it comes to substandard thrillers. The plot is a convoluted mess
that veers back and forth in time with little rhyme or reason and is never
close to being as smart and clever as it thinks it is. Screenwriter Wesley
Strick completely drops the ball here—the dialogue is trite, the characters
are paper-thin and universally unpleasant and uninteresting and the denouement
is borderline laughable in its attempts to tie all of the plot lines together
while still yanking the rug out from under viewers.
As for van Looy (whose 2003 thriller “The
Memory of a Killer” is as good as this one is awful), he appears to be on
autopilot the entire time, presumably out of sheer boredom, because there is
not one cinematically interesting moment to be had. The actors are pretty much
coasting throughout as well for the most part with as little energy and
enthusiasm as possible. The one exception to this is Eric Stonestreet, who
seems so thrilled at the prospect of playing a character so different from the one
he portrays on “Modern Family” that he overplays every seen to the
point where you may find yourself involuntarily flinching every time he comes
on screen. As for the women, they
are pretty much depicted throughout as either shrews or prostitutes and the
film’s ultimate attitude towards them can probably be divined by the fact that
the two main actresses—Taylor and
Isabel Lucas—are refugees from the “Transfomers” franchise.
“The
Loft” is a film that seems to have been designed specifically to appear in
empty theaters in the dead of January. It is a total wash as a thriller, it is
too clunky and simplistic to work as a mystery, it has no insights into male
psychology that could make it work as a drama and its erotic quotient is so
minimal that it could only be a turn-on to people who consider HGTV to be
pornography. The best thing about it is that it is so utterly disposable that
it will quickly be forgotten and everyone involved can go on to presumably
better things.
Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-loft-2015
