The Loft is a 2014 erotic thriller film directed by Erik Van Looy. It is a remake of the 2008 Dutch-language Belgian film Loft, which Van Looy also directed. The screenplay was written by Bart De Pauw and adapted by Wesley Strick. Starring Karl Urban, James Marsden and Wentworth Miller, it also features Matthias Schoenaerts who reprises his role from the original film.
The architect Vincent Stevens; the psychiatrist Chris Vanowen; the real estate agents Luke Seacord and Marty Landry; and Chris' half-brother Philip Trauner are married and best friends. Vincent has designed a brand new building and proposes that he and his friends share one of the wonderful penthouse lofts. This would allow them to hook up with other women without worrying about hotel charges showing up on their credit cards. When they discover the body of a beautiful woman cuffed on the bed in the loft, they argue over whom is responsible and secrets are disclosed affecting their friendship.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Philip and Zoe's father (and Chris's stepfather) was a violent alcoholic who used to physically abuse Philip and and Zoe, although Chris escaped his wrath.
- Accidental Murder: Believing that Sarah has committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills, Philip attempts to make the crime scene more dramatic by handcuffing her to the bed and then slitting her wrist. However, it turns out that Sarah was Not Quite Dead, but actually in an insulin coma, but she then bled out from the slit wrist.
- Anachronic Order: Starts with one of the last events of the story (the body landing on the car) and then proceeds to flashback to events leading up to this. These flashbacks do not occur in chronological order, however.
- All Men Are Perverts: An underlying theme of the film is that men are incapable of being faithful.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: After everything unravels, Luke hears the police sirens approaching and realises that he now cannot escape arrest and the subsequent imprisonment and disgrace. He instead chooses to pitch himself backwards off the balcony to his death.
- Business Trip Adultery: Five married friends pool their cash to rent a midtown penthouse loft in the city, as a place to bring cute babes for trysts. Since each of them must visit the city on business, this seems like a dream set-up. Their secret snuggle den with a view becomes a nightmare when a woman's dead body is found there one night.
- Car Cushion: The film opens with a body falling off a balcony and landing on a car parked in the street below.
- Cheater Gets Cheated On: Mimi retaliates against Marty’s infidelity by going to bed with Vincent. Marty is heartbroken, and the other three friends are disgusted with Vincent.
- Chris (who is cheating on his wife with Anna) learns that Anna is also one of Vincent’s conquests (perhaps ‘contractor’ is a better word)
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Sarah has unrealistic expectations of Vincent’s interest in monogamy.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: A message in Sarah's blood is written on the headboard of the bed: the Latin phrase "fatum nos iungebit" (intended to be Latin for "fate will unite us"):Chris Vanowen: "fatum nos iungebit" is wrong.
Detective Cohagan: How so, doctor?
Chris Vanowen: The future imperfect tense of the verb unite, iungere, is not iungebit. It's iunget. It should say "fatum nos iunget." So the person you're looking for made a classic Latin error. But I'm guessing you knew that already, too, didn't you? - Dramatic Drop: When Luke enters the loft and finds the dead body of the woman handcuffed to the bed, he drops the two bags of bottles of alcohol he is carrying, and the bottles shatter on the hardwood floor.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Philip is a cocaine addict who is prone to sudden and unpredictable fits of explosive rage; even at his own wedding.
- High-Class Call Girl: Anne Morris is a very expensive prostitute who usually serves a paid consort to city councilman.
- In Love with the Mark: High-Class Call Girl Anne is initially hired by Vincent to seduce Chris in order to manipulate him into accepting a key to the loft. However, after this initial encounter, she falls in love with Chris and continues the relationship with him.
- Jerkass: The Motion Picture. Not one male in the story comes off particularly well, except for perhaps Detective Cohagan – whose likeability is never explored. All five of the male leads are either unfaithful to their wives, or are trying hard to be. On top of this:
- Philp is cheating on his wife (accepting a key to the loft on his wedding day!!) and is a coke fiend which does nothing to help his severe anger issues and violent tendencies. He’s also a rapist who delivers the gem “She’s a whore. You can’t rape a whore”. In addition, he’s violently protective of his sister Zoey, to the extent of Slut-Shaming her just for being at a party, and taking a swing at a guy who was too close to her for his liking. To top it all off, he’s responsible for actually killing Sarah. Granted, he thought he was only staging the scene, but it was his actions that caused her death. Normally that would easily make Philip the most despicable character in the film, but in this field he has surprisingly strong competition from …
- Luke is the only one of the five who is not actually cheating on his wife – but that’s only because he’s unsuccessful in seducing Sarah from Vincent. Luke is also voyeur who secretly films the sexual trysts of his friends, much to their disgust. Luke tries to murder Sarah by insulin overdose, but he is not successful at it.
- Marty is a crude, boorish loudmouth even when he’s sober. When he’s drunk he’s worse, and he’s drunk more times than not. He cheats on his wife, and is ok with covering up Sarah’s death.
- Vincent habitually cheats on his wife and his conquests include Phillip’s sister Zoey, Marty’s wife Mimi, and Chris’s love interest Anna. These disgusts the other four men even more than Luke’s voyeurism or Phillip’s rape of the prostitute.
- Philip’s father in law Hiram is, (surprise, surprise), unfaithful to his wife.
- City Councilman Joel Kotkin is one of Anna’s usual clients.
- Maybe Ever After: The epilogue, set six months after the main events of the film, ends with the newly-divorced Chris leaving a bar when he is approached by Anne Morris who asks him if he wants to get a coffee with her.
- Meaningful Echo: The epilogue, set six months after the main events of the film, ends with the newly-divorced Chris leaving a bar when he is approached by Anne Morris who asks him if he wants to get a coffee with her: echoing their first conversation.
- My Sister Is Off-Limits: Philip is violently protective of his kid sister Zoe. He almost assaults Marty for making lewd comment about her, and after learning that Vincent has slept with her, he stages the crime scene to make it appear more violent, and inadvertently causes Sarah's death.
- The Peeping Tom: Luke has secretly installed cameras in the loft and uses them to record his friends' trysts, with the implication that he is watching them back for his own pleasure.
- Posthumous Character: The woman in the bed is dead at the start of the film, with even her identity in doubt. She is later revealed to be Sarah and flashbacks reveal more about her and how she came to be there.
- Red Herring: The business about Anne being the sister of one of Chris's patients who committed suicide turns out to be completely unrelated to death of the woman in the loft. Given it is later revealed that her first meeting with Chris with staged by Vincent, it is possible the story about her sister might not even be true.
- Skinny Dipping: Vincent and Sarah take a naked swim in the pool on the hotel roof, which quickly turns into a Two-Person Pool Party.
- Sleek High Rise Apartment: This aesthetic is exploited by a cabal of yuppies, who collectively lease a luxury apartment with a towering view of the city. They maintain this place as a "love den" for seducing cute babes, giving the illusion that they're wealthy moguls rather than the salarymen they are. The plot escalates when one partner discovers evidence of horrific carnage when it's his turn to use the loft.
- Slipping a Mickey: Happens twice. The first scene in which this happens has Chris, Luke, Marty and Philip conspire to drug Vincent and place him naked next to Sarah’s corpse. A later scene shows that before that happened, Luke drugged Sarah to put her to sleep so he could give her an overdose of insulin.
- Toplessness from the Back: When Sarah strips off to Skinny Dipping with Vincent in the hotel, Luke (and the audience) gets a view of her naked back (and her delectable backside).
- Two-Person Pool Party: A dare between Vincent and Sarah to go Skinny Dipping in the hotel pool quickly becomes very hot and heavy.
- Woman Scorned: There’s quite a few of them, some onscreen, and presumably more off.
- Mimi is furious with Marty and taunts that she just might even the score. She does.
- Allison is angered by Chris’s secretive behavior, but it’s never clear one how much she knows.
- Elane is angered by Luke’s none-too-subtle attachment to Sarah, but again the movie’s unclear on how much she knows.
- Even Sarah, though a mistress, is hurt by the fact that Vincent is still attached to his wife Barbara, and upset at the notion that she’s not the only mistress in Vincent’s life. She has no clue how correct that notion is.
