Loft

Dans le genre, c’est de la bombe ! C’est tout ce que j’aime : une intrigue tendue et complexe, un paquet de personnages, une bonne dose de psychologie, des surprises, des retournements de situation. Les Belges commencent à me convaincre qu’ils sont en première ligue du cinéma européen. Et je ne vois pas ce que les Hollandais veulent prouver en recréant exactement le même film… (25/07/2014)

I was quite unsure of the film for the first half, but after that it all started to fall into place beautifully. I consider the portrayal of the intricacies of the characters' relationships and motivations to be a big plus, albeit a slow but all the more believable one. In short, the whole film is about collecting the characters' speeches, their perspectives, forming their profile, and based on that, guessing the payoff (which is not bad). What is interesting is the five main characters. Possible *SPOILER ALERT*. While the film unfortunately couldn't get by without the classic positive hero (he's just kept hidden for a long time), the character comparisons of the rest are interesting. The first one is an architect, an intellectual, a man of few words with a pleasant appearance who turns out to be an amazing bastard in the end. The second is an impulsive cocaine addict who cares for his sister, but also beats up women and is a murderer. The third is a pitiful voyeur who, instead of politely cheating on his wife, films and stores them all in a private DVD library. Yeah, and he's also a murderer. Last is an alcoholic who's not to blame for anything because he's an alcoholic. His wife breaks up with him during the movie, but by the end they're back together. So what is evil, anyway? Murder? Involuntary manslaughter? Attempted murder? Fucking all the girls your friends are involved with? You guessed right, and so this is another film in which the viewer's own moral and ethical law is placed above the laws of all of society. It's just a shame that the film has too many endings and each one worse than the other. And the profession of love was somehow inappropriate in those pre-designed cold interiors, where, in my opinion, the most you can really do is murder and at least feel something. -) (26/01/2011)

I do respect the idea that Loft is based on. It was actually the reason why I decided to watch the movie in the first place. But the problem starts already in the first minute when you get to meet a succession of several characters who aren’t very likeable. I wasn’t able to get used to any of them, so there was nothing left for me but emotionlessly watch shot after shot in this increasingly intricate thriller. The final unravelling is much more complicated than anybody would have thought and the result is such that it wouldn’t have been expected even by a guy in his 50’s who got punched by life so many times that it’s a surprise he’s still alive in the first place and that he didn’t opt for premature retirement to go contemplate things somewhere in Tibet. (17/11/2014)

A good conversational thriller with an unravelling that you won’t see coming. Though, I think it has too many twists for my taste. And they come so fast one after the other that you don’t have time to figure out which of the many valid interpretations of the events make sense or not, let alone try to come up with your own. (12/06/2014)

The closer to the ending, the more twists happen in Loft and the less sense any effort makes to predict how it's probably going to play out. But in doing so, it does not give an overcomplicated impression - the creators wanted to mess with the spectator's minds, which they managed to do, and then surprise them, which was also successful. Maybe it didn't have to be so long and the epilogue was completely unnecessary, but that's just two little criticisms. Otherwise, I had fun and was pleasantly tense. (21/10/2018)