[REVIEW] The Loft (2015) Is A Frustrating Mess

Runtime: 108 Mins
Rated: R
What To Expect: Pinball machine narrative, overwritten and edited to death

This movie, The Loft, with its curious majority of 10/10 ratings on the IMDb as of writing this despite being critically mauled right now (see evidence of vote rigging on the IMDb), is a frustrating mess of flash forwards, flash backwards, flash sidewards and flash double-backwards sectors, which really drains the desire to continue watching the movie.  The fact that the film was in the can in 2011 but is only really now getting its big release might tell us something.  And it’s all a pity because it had a nice concept and a fairly interesting trailer.  It had good potential to be a ‘guy movie’ but the potential was squandered.

Are you married?  And cheating (otherwise known as by manly men as ‘pre-emption’)?  Could be time then, to rent a loft for these ‘matters’.  Watch out for the dead bodies though.  This movie is about five friends (with Karl Urban among them) who co-rent a high end condo to bring their Goomahs to so that they can fuck them in peace.  Only the five have keys, so when one of the women turns up dead in the apartment, only one of the friends can be responsible with the plot challenging us on spotting who.  But this whodunnit quickly turns to who gives a fuck.

This is one of those movies that opens with part of the finale/ending right at the start, with the cops interviewing the suspects.  Is that what films are stooping to more and more these days, fear that the audience hasn’t got the attention to see it through, so throw up the punchline after the fucking opening credits?  C’mon…

It gets worse though.  As mentioned above there are so many flashbacks, flashforwards and such that it becomes a mess with no ‘present’ narrative.  Some pros can pull this type of thing off, like Quentin Tarantino, but some overstretch their limits and get ahead of themselves.  Put simply, you don’t know whether you’re coming or going with this movie!  The sex scenes are also pretty shitty, no action from wife Rhona Mitra this time around, which might have eleviated the tedium.  So a cool concept has quite competent visuals and a strong cast, is quicksand you’re going to need to avoid.