The Loft

By: Robert Murphy

You could have all the money in the world and still be unhappy enough to cheat on the beautiful wife you have waiting at home I suppose or better yet, you think you're smart enough to get away with cheating on your wife and she'll never find out. Yes, there are a million different stories of cheating husbands, many of which think they're so smart that their wives will never catch on or that they have found the perfect solution for never getting caught. To their credit, I thought the guys in The Loft didn't have such a bad idea when cocky architect Vincent (Karl Urban) gets his four closest friends to go in on a little idea of his. They're all apparently unhappy with their current situations so why don't we secretly buy a loft together for our own personal shag pad. Well, nice guy Chris (James Marsden), soft spoken Luke (Wentworth Miller), sexist pig Marty (Eric Stonestreet) and probable killer/half brother to Chris, Phillip (Matthias Schoenaerts), all decide to give it a whirl thinking what could go wrong, turns out a lot. 

What bothers me right from the get go in The Loft is the fact that the audience is just left to assume that all these guys want to cheat on their wives, except for Chris who initially turns down the offer until he meets the very attractive Anne (Rachael Taylor). We do learn more about these men later as the story flashes back and forth between the present and the events leading up to the five of them finding a dead blonde in their super secret hideout. But, I'll get to that. The only one of these men who seem to be slightly capable of ever cheating on their wives would be Vincent, the cocky look he has smeared across his face for the entire film makes it painstakingly obvious that this is just for him. The rest of them are there so he doesn't have to pay full price on the loft. They genuinely show no emotion one way or the other on what they're doing or what's going on around them. 

This is perhaps the other big other problem with the film, all five of these actors just coast their way through each and every scene with dumb struck looks on their faces. Well, save for Marty who has his mouth constantly flapping. The current Modern Family star shows just about the only emotion you'll see for the hour and a half long film but he overdose it by a long shot as if he's trying to shout out to everyone, "Hey, I can do other roles too! See?!" The rest of them don't seem to care about the film as they put no effort forth in any of their performances. Which begs the question, why should you care about a movie when not even the actors give a damn about it?

Now where things should pick up for the story is right from the get go when the body is found in the apartment, the woman is found handcuffed to the bed with a massive blood pool around her lifeless body. Call the police should be the first thing that happens but no, these guys think they're smart remember? So they try and figure it all out by themselves, who did it, when, how and why? It should be easy to figure out since they're the only ones who know about the place and are the only ones with keys to the apartment. This being where the flashbacks begin to blend into the story and we are left to put the pieces together in this gripping mystery. Well, it's far from all that as the characters and dialogue never make it quite as interesting as the creators of The Loft make it out to be. The story tries to throw distractions in for the viewers by making you think there could be some grand scheme in the works that involves high level people you don't want to mess with or maybe the mysterious Anne has something to do with the whole setup as it's revealed her diseased sister was a patient of Chris's psychiatric practice. It's not half as suspenseful as it is made out to be and never supplies any shock or emotion that a movie like this needs in order to be any good.

When all is said and done, The Loft is a mess of bad ideas about five guys who never seem all that interested in cheating in the first place, they buy a loft and frankly don't do anything with it. Except for Karl Urban's character who apparently sleeps with every woman in the film. The whole thing fails to be anything close to a thriller and fails even more at trying to make somewhat of a mystery out of the whole ordeal. Maybe if somebody could crack the mold on some of the lifeless faceless on screen then I could have been bothered to show some interest but save yourselves the trouble and find a better thriller somewhere else.

Good:

- Not a thing

Bad:

- Lifeless characters

- Absence of any sort of thrilling moments for an alleged thriller movie

- Convoluted and messy story that was doomed from the get go

Scully Rating: 1.0 out of 10