Loft

This is one of the best thrillers I have seen. It's so well written, so well acted and edited. The direction is great, the story is gripping, every little piece fits into the other, making this movie into a masterpiece.

For me that is, the tension that is built holds up from the very start until the end. And I'm pretty sure there will be an American Remake of this movie anytime soon. And when they'll do a remake, they can't actually do anything wrong (it's almost impossible messing this up), because the movie is just top notch. Unfortunately most people will only have a chance to watch it at home, although this deserves to be seen on the big screen. Look out for it, if you like intelligent and tension filled thrillers that keep you guessing until the end ...

Highly recommended Belgian movie Loft (2008), proved to be a very engaging cinematic fare about five married men renting a state-of-the-art loft apartment as a playground for their extramarital affairs and a meeting point for encounters with their mistresses, one of them, eventually, becoming an object of a crime scene, so the initial story about five "allies", plotting together, united around their common gains and benefits, evolves into exciting whodunit puzzle about five "enemies" scheming against each other, divided by their individual excuses and vindication, a group of supposed-to-be friends now going through self-exposing, eye-opening exercise, with a number of revealing-concealing, (un)intentionally deceiving, mystery building flash-backs, leading to a numerous clever twists and turns.

The movie takes a while to pick up steam but soon enough the director takes us on exactly the kind of roller-coaster ride we want out of a whodunit thriller. The story's very sly and just when you think you've figured it all out, it slips away from you, it's like trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap. Van Looy's greatest accomplishment is avoiding the sin most of the movies in this genre make: neglect the characters. Without losing pace, we manage to really get to know the pawns in our chess game, and as each one's motivations start to sink in, even the most unlikely become suspect.

We see here assembled a who's who of Belgian stars, the dream team cast, even the smaller roles are given to top class actors (Jan Decleir). The film's lighter on it's feet than Van Looy's previous, we (on first sight) get to deal with far less tortured souls, which makes some room for humorous intervals, I fear a lot of these will get lost in translation.

As in all stories, but even more so in plot-driven thrillers, the end's the most important part. It delights me that they didn't choose a ridiculous, nonsensical ending as so much postmodern thrillers shamelessly do these days. I can't give anything away of course, but I for one didn't see it coming at all and yet it adds up when you replay previous scenes in your head.

Go see it, it merits national and international attention.

Storytelling is an art.

If you have a decent story to tell, there's a couple of tools one can use to involve the audience in this modern crime-mystery. The creators have carefully made use of a well proportioned amount of all sort of goodies at their disposal to make the movie captivating. It stings your interest, it bites your brainwaves and in a completely natural way it wakes up the hidden private detective in the spectators mind.

You're no longer watching the movie, you are in it yourself.

"Loft" is a well build-up whodunit-flick, both worth your money & your time.

Although it's still relatively recent, it's actually a huge disgrace that it took me until now to finally watch and review "Loft". This is the most acclaimed, both publicly and critically, movie ever to be made in my home country Belgium and it instantly broke all historical box office records over here. I don't really have a valid excuse for waiting so long (perhaps didn't want to jump into the momentarily hype?) but I'm glad to announce that "Loft" is a solid and suspenseful thriller that can easily compete with the large foreign offer of similar movies. The film deals with typical Hollywood themes (adultery, murder, conspiracy theories…) and implements the contemporary popular narrative structure of flashbacks and messed up continuity, but luckily enough the atmosphere and character drawings remain old-fashioned Flemish. Under the influence of the sleazy architect Vince, five men in their late 30's and with a typical yuppie mentality secretly share a luxurious loft in the center of Antwerp where they can go with their mistresses and/or prostitutes without having to explain hotel bills and Visa expenses to their wives. When one of them stumbles upon the barbarically butchered corpse of a young girl in the morning, they gather together in the loft to discuss the situation. There are only five keys to the apartment and the doors where locked when they discovered the girl, so logically speaking one of them has to be the culprit. Through a series of flashbacks and deeper character elaborations, the script illustrates that the five perhaps aren't the loyal and close friends than they might think and that their lies, unfaithfulness and deception will finally bring them down. The scenario, spawn from the creative and versatile mind of Bart De Pauw, practically unfolds like a mystery thriller with Giallo allures. The plot grows increasingly convoluted with each flashback and each new red herring, and just when you think all the revelations are made, there's another new and unpredictable plot twist. The final twist is perhaps even one too many, but then still the events remains plausible and very well-written. Numerous sequences in "Loft" are very powerful and display a genuine sense of craftsmanship. The roughly edited and fast paced sequence inside the casino, where all protagonists are gathered not only with their wives but also with their mistresses and personal opponents, is nail-bitingly tense and atmospheric. Some of the characters are stereotypical, like the lightly inflammable bad-boy Filip and the nerdy Luc, but those aren't obstacles. Despite of the easily exploitative themes, the amount of gratuitous sex and explicit violence is kept low in favor of suspense-building and intrigue. This is particularly praiseworthy for a Belgian film, rest assured.