K-SCORE: 24
Director: Erik Van Looy
Writer: Bart de Pauw, Wesley Strick
Starring: Karl Urban, James Marsden, Eric Stonestreet, Wentworth Miller, Matthias Schoenaerts
Spoiler Level: Major
They all did it. I'm going to go home and sleep with my wife.
Given the premise that five men are cheating on their wives all in the same luxurious downtown apartment and one of them is guilty of murdering a beautiful young woman, you’d think the writers would want to take steps to make their characters more likable, flawed, but perhaps not evil. For balance. Not so much. They’re even more horrible people than you would suppose. (No spoilers: stop here. Better idea: read on and never watch this movie.)
“middle-aged criminal who cheats on his wife”
James Marsden plays the ethically-driven hero of the film, a successful, lovable, sexist, middle-aged criminal who cheats on his wife, lies about it, sleeps with a prostitute multiple times, lies to that prostitute that he has plans to leave his wife, tells her that he loves her, makes her really upset, stalks her, all while breaking promises and betraying his friends. But with friends like these, maybe that last bit can be forgiven. Karl Urban plays a successful, well-dressed, wealthy, attractive, sexist, middle-aged criminal who cheats on his wife, lies to her about it, sleeps with one of his best friend’s wives, sleeps with the mentally unstable sister of two of his other best friends, and tries to convince all four of them that they shouldn’t call the police to report a murder that took place in the apartment they share because he’s worried his secret will be revealed. Eric Stonestreet plays an overweight, alcoholic, angry, hateful, sexist, middle-aged criminal who cheats on his wife, lies to her about it, taunts one of his friends he knows was abused as a child, tries to sleep with every woman he encounters except the fat one he berates for being fat even though he is as fat if not fatter, sleeps with the fat one because he can, begs his wife to take him back when she finds out, agrees that they shouldn’t report a murder that took place in the apartment they all share, drugs and ties up one of his best friends to frame him for murder, and lies to the police about the circumstances surrounding the crime. Matthias Schoenaerts plays a brutish, idiotic, violent, cocaine-addicted, sexist, middle-aged criminal who cheats on his wife, lies to her about it, hires prostitutes to sleep with him, ties them up with handcuffs, physically abuses them, rapes them, calls his friends to clean up after him, convinces them not to report his crimes, costs them all a ton of money, drugs and ties up one such friend that got him out of the cocaine-raging rape jam and frames him for murder, slices the wrist of a woman he assumed was dead without checking to see that she was dead, smears her blood on the headboard of the bed even though there was no reason to do so, scribbles some broken latin phrase, presumably to create confusion, and lies to the police about the whole thing. Wentworth Miller plays a creepy, maybe latently gay, voyeuristic, psychopathic, jealous, sexist, middle-aged criminal who cheats on his wife, lies about it, lies about everything he does to everyone he meets, films all his best friends’ extensive adulterous sexual escapades, blackmails them with the information he has, drugs an innocent woman, assumes he’s murdered her, convinces three of the others to frame one of the others for the crime, falsifies a suicide note for the girl he sort of killed, lies to the police about his crimes, tries to murder one of his friends with a butcher’s knife when his crimes are exposed, and then, in a moment of shocking clarity, jumps off a balcony.
Horrible characters that are all varying degrees of the same shitty man, is just one of the problems with The Loft. Not even the biggest. I’d say the biggest problem it’s really boring. Maybe that none of the characters are creeped out by the fact that they’re all knowingly having sex with a ton of different women, in shifts, in the same bed.