Erik Van Looy's English-language remake of his 2008 Belgian thriller follows five married buddies (played by Karl Urban, James Marsden, Wentworth Miller, Eric Stonestreet, and Matthias Schoenaerts) who decide to buy an apartment for extramarital trysts in a new building designed by Urban's character, Vincent. This set-up is presented in an elaborate series of flashbacks while the guys are being interrogated by cops, following the discovery of the butchered body of a woman in the penthouse loft. The men bicker about what should be done and accuse one another of responsibility for the murder. Meanwhile, more flashbacks reveal a whole slew of complications, including an affair by one man with an icy blonde who is the mistress of a crooked city councilman allied to the rich father-in-law of another one of the men. Unfortunately, it's hard to be the least bit interested in any of these cardboard characters, who spout ludicrously flat dialogue in an increasingly artificial plot. One could argue that that the loopy style here is meant to be a parody of the over-plotted puzzle movie, but that would be giving The Loft entirely too much credit—it's really just absurdly, almost hilariously terrible, a whodunit featuring characters so repulsive that it ends up being a whocareswhodunit. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)
The Loft
Universal, 103 min., R, DVD: $29.98, Blu-ray/DVD Combo: $34.98, May 26 Volume 30, Issue 3
The Loft
Star Ratings
As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.
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