The Loft (Movie Review)

Ever since I stumbled across some movie vans while living in New Orleans a few years ago and hearing that they were working on a horror/thriller called The Loft, I have been dying for this movie to come out. Alas, as is the case with many American remakes of foreign horror films, it seems that much is lost in translation. Based on the 2008 Belgian film, The Loft, is about a group of friends with a dirty secret. At the opening of his new building, Vince (Karl Urban), proposes to his buddies that they all go in together on a condo, which they can use to carry out their illicit affairs, despite the fact that, at the time that the suggestion is made, it seems that none of the men seem to be involved in affairs. Most of them repeat over and over again that they “aren’t like that”, but the power quickly goes to their heads, and soon each of them is utilizing the loft. The five of them are the only ones with keys and no one else knows the passcode. Much like the ending to a Scooby Doo episode, you can almost hear the, “and I would have gotten away with it too!” if it weren’t for the dead girl they find one morning, bloodied and handcuffed to the headboard. 

The Loft is full of problems almost from the beginning. When the body of the young woman is originally discovered, several of the men proclaim confidently that they have no idea who she is, despite the fact that her body is lying face down and they haven’t made any attempts to turn her over or look at her face. As could probably be surmised of a movie with a plot like this one, The Loft has a pretty abysmal view of women. Despite having several female characters, they are all secondary, at best, and have very little in the way of distinguishing features. I feel fairly confident that most viewers would be unable to name most of them by the end of this film’s run time. And before you argue that the film is really about these five men, I completley agree. But all the women become nothing more than pieces of meat for them to ogle, or catalysts for plot points. And while friendly and familiar faces are all over this movie, they are all surprisingly unlikeable. Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) plays a nerded up and lame version of himself. Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family) is a gross and perverted jerk, and James Marsden (X-Men) plays a character who essentially demands that the woman he has been sleeping with love him back, refusing to accept that she may not want him to leave his wife for her.

The cinematography and scoring of this movie also leave a lot to be desired. For the most part, the camera work is nondescript and dark, like many thrillers, but when The Loft wants you to pay attention to something, it will make sure you know. This is achieved by centering the object in the frame, or by smashing together a series of out-of-focus quick zooms like a bad 90’s music video. A not-so-subtle score of suspense plays under just about every scene of the movie, even ones where characters are just having normal conversations, which really ends up ruining the moments that could be tense. This seems to be only a symptom of a larger problem within the story. This movie is really unsure on its feet, and ends up going way too big to compensate. There are no fewer than three big plot twists in the third act, which don’t so much fit neatly together like puzzle pieces as they just feel jumbled and incoherent like mushing several flavors of chewed gum together. 

In the end, I really wanted to like this movie, but found it pretty impossible to do so.