Architect
Vincent (Urban, Riddick) has a plan
to cheat on his wife (Cruz, Cellular)
in a way that will remove the traces of hotel bills and credit
card paper trails: he's left to himself a pricey loft apartment in a
high-rise building he's designed in the middle of downtown Anycity,
USA, where he can bring in his conquests without fear of being caught.
To cover the exorbitant price, Vincent gets four of his successful
buddies to go in with him for the same purpose.
Belgian director Erik Van Looy (The Memory of a Killer, Shades)
remakes his own 2008 film, Loft, in the hopes that an English
film with a few Hollywood actors can prove successful in the American
and other world markets. Matthias Schoenaerts (The
Drop) reprises his role from the earlier film as the
tantrum-prone Philip, but not even he can bring a movie this DOA
(about a woman who is DOA) back to life.
Shelved for over two years due to a problem with their distribution
deal, The
Loft is trotted out in the dumping ground of January of 2015.
Why the distribution was an issue is beyond my comprehension, since
this film feels like VOD/DTV material all of the way. The film
contains no real bankable stars, and outside of
Gone Girl, the sexy thriller genre
hasn't really been screaming at the box office. Plus, the movie
flat out stinks -- perhaps the worst European-to-American remake by
the same director since George Sluizer remade The Vanishing
back in 1993.
Though it might seem like merely an excuse for some gratuitous sex, at
its heart, The Loft is built on a mystery: A seemingly
murdered girl in a locked apartment that only the five men have a key
to. The tale is told with flashbacks from a police interrogation
of the prime suspects, who are all staying mum on what sorts of
activities go on in the loft. The entire premise is a gimmick to
begin with, and then the filmmakers sink the film further into the
abyss by trying to zig and zag with the narrative, with an especially
overbearing final half hour of pulling out rugs from under rugs from
under rugs from under our feet. It's probably the least
plausible and downright insufferable 30-minute sequence of events that
I can recall in a thriller in some time.
Red herrings and plot twists abound, but the main problem with The
Loft is that you won't care to find out who the killer is or why
he/she/they committed the heinous deed. The reason is that
pretty much all of the protagonists are loathsome and reprehensible
people that we have no sympathy for, and whether all of them did it,
or none of them, we feel like they should get just desserts for their
selfish and disturbingly deviant behavior all around.
A special award should go to Eric Stonestreet (Identity
Thief, Bad Teacher) for
managing to embody one of the most loathsome characters in the history
of cinema, Marty, a portly, obnoxious woman-hating drunk who somehow
thinks that the loft is a great idea, as a 'pussy pad' could be where
he takes all of his conquests. It's hard to imagine any woman
desirous of him given his lack of good looks, but assuming they can
see beyond the physical appearance, it would only take two words of
conversation from the man to make any woman recoil. It's even harder to
imagine he's getting the better end of the five-way split. It's
impossible to imagine that he actually has a wife and friends.
The flashbacks have flashbacks, and the whole plot of the film becomes
too convoluted to follow for the few viewers who manage to not give up
trying or caring about the resolution. It feels like a Brian De
Palma film, save for the joy of cinema. Though stylish, the
extreme close-ups and boring, grey visuals don't exactly pop out,
leading to a deadening of suspense. You'd think that excitement
should be generated from the frenzied orchestral music, which is so
overused that it drowns out even conversations that have zero
excitement in content. It's an overly sleek-looking mess.
I could call The Loft just a deplorable piece of misogynistic
shock-and-schlock, but I don't think it hates women as much as it just
hates humanity. I hate this movie right back, and chances are,
you will too.
-- Loft had also been previously remade in 2010 in the
Netherlands.
Qwipster's rating:
©2015 Vince Leo
