The Loft (2015)

I love this movie so much

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

good back-story, and good acting

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great storyline if it is well acted, which this one isn't. Originally a Belgian movie, later better remade in the Netherlands (where I'm from). I absolutely love the Dutch film, I really hate this one.

All of the characters are sleezebags and/or stupid. The hooker with the heart of gold, the five cheating frenemies, the stupid, clingy, unhappy wives, the dumb sleezy pickup artist who was stupid enough to think some rich guy was going to leave his wife for her.Dumb, dumb, dumb...let me count the ways...1. You don't try to stage a dead body after 10 hours or so...there's something called lividity, which means the blood has pooled, so when you find a body lying on its back and you turn it over on its stomach, the coroner, unless, he or she is as stupid as you are, is going to figure out this dead body, which when it was alive supposedly committed suicide, didn't.2. See above. this also goes along with cutting it's wrist after the fact. The body was already dead, dummy, just leave it as it was. Don't cut it's wrists and hack it up. Again, forensics will determine the blood flow, that the heart wasn't pumping, that the blood is old, blood splatter, etc. Remember you are trying to make this a suicide - not a murder by a butcher who hung around to do more damage to a dead body long after the fact.3. She was dead and left a suicide note, why did you have to do anything with the body???4. If you are going to kill someone with an injection, don't do it in their arm, put a spot where the sun don't shine and hope a thorough examination doesn't find the injection spot.5. After moving a dead body after it's been dead for hour, sob all over it and leave your freaking DNA, skin, and haircells, why don't you . We already know your stupid. 6. How do you still have a key to a crime scene, where you and the actual murderer could get in? Wouldn't the cops change the locks and secure it would more than tape, confiscate the keys???7. A murderer decides to explain everything to a guy wearing a coat, has a cellphone and possibly a wire??? Really bad film-making and writing.8. Why trust a coke-head, out of control moron to cover up the crime? What did you expect a nut-job like him would do? Why didn't you recognize the problem after the fact either? Isn't one of you idiots supposed to be a doctor, haven't you watched The Forensic Files, Law & Order, any cop show??? Ever heard of DNA??? See #1 and 2 above9. You're all liars and cheaters, why would *any* of you trust the other guy???10. The character with the supposed moral compass (he's shtupping the hooker) is as sleazy as the rest of them. Please don't attempt to make it the good guy. He's cheating on his wife and kids. Really? Did he think he was just going to have a cup of coffee with a woman who told him she wasn't wearing a panties in public? He resisted her "charms" for, what, like 10 seconds?11. The hooker with the heart of gold...really?12. Is that ending supposed to be upbeat? Get her tested for STDs man. Millions of women in the world, you're bored with your wife, and you pick a hooker?13. Why aren't they all going on trial or in jail for obstruction of justice and abuse of a corpse, lying to the police, and any number of broken laws?Stupid writing, stupid direction, stupid acting. Bad, just really bad, so bad, I had to sign in just to write how bad.And everyone looked unshaven, greasy, smelly, and like they needed a good bath. How anyone wanted to sleep with any of them for money or not is beyond me. Ewww...

If Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" had been a murder mystery, this would be it. A group of married men share a secret love nest for their extramarital trysts. The married men include Karl Urban, James Marsden, Eric Stonestreet, and two others. Their arrangement seems to be working just fine until they discover a dead woman in the loft and the group must then figure out which one of them is a murderer. It's not a bad set-up, but the film is all clichés and has so many twists and turns that the story goes well beyond stretching credulity. The film was written by Wesley Strick, who has a couple good films under his belt with the "Cape Fear" remake and "Final Analysis," although I believe those films were good based upon the strength of their directors, Martin Scorsese and Phil Joanou respectively. The film is actually a remake of a film out of Belgium and this film's director, Erik Van Looy, directed both. Overall, the film is slickly made, has a solid cast, but falls apart as a result of the weak script.

As most of the pretty principal performers populating the production appear to be spawned from the genre (excluding an alcohol-addled Eric Stonestreet of the tube's "Modern Family"), the potboiler murder mystery "The Loft" plays out like a soap opera on steroids.The style is slick; the substance, just enough to thump your thinker. Talk about your guilty pleasure. If finding this bombastic B-movie to be good fun and it's twisted plot tantalizingly twisty makes me a sucker for schlock, then it is guilty as charged, Your Honor.So climb on up into "The Loft". You're headed into one bloody blast of a good time.