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Koen De Bouw, Filip Peeters, Bruno van den Broecke, Matthias Schoenaerts, Koen De Graeve ... see more see more... , Veerle Baetens , Ann Miller , Jan Decleir , Tina Reymer , Charlotte Vandermeersch , Dirk Roofthooft , Sara de Roo , Wine Dierickx , Marie Vinck , Bruno Vanden Broucke , An Miller , Maaike Cafmeyer , Tine Reymer

Five men share a secret that has deadly consequences in this thriller from Belgium. When Filip (Matthias Schoenaerts), a playboy with a wild streak, finally settles down and gets married, his good fri... read more read more...end Vincent (Filip Peeters) presents him and three of his friends with a special gift. Vincent is an architect, and after supervising the renovation of a apartment block, he installed a luxurious penthouse flat for the use of himself and his married pals, where they can enjoy liaisons with other women without their spouses becoming any the wiser. Filip, Vincent and three of their buddies -- hard-drinking ladies' man Marnix (Koen de Graeve), Filip's psychoanalyst brother Chris (Koen De Bauw) and taciturn Luc (Bruno Vanden Broecke) -- are the only ones with keys to the flat, and the only ones who are supposed to know it exists. But one day one of the five checks into the apartment and discovers a woman's bloody corpse shackled to the bed; one of their group is a murderer, but who is the killer and how can the others keep this a secret from the police and their families? Loft was directed by Erik Van Looy and written by Bart de Pauw, both of whom got their start in the film business as actors. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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82% liked it

2,035 ratings

Unrated, 1 hr. 57 min.

Directed by: Erik Van Looy

Release Date: October 22, 2008

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Flixster Reviews (180)

  • mvieaddict
    February 4, 2011
    mvieaddict
    I am not familiar with Belgium cinema and these actors were all unknown for me but even so the movie LOFT, proved to be a very engaging and complicated tale about five married men, best friends, sharing a loft apartment as a playground for their affairs, and a meeting point for... read more their mistresses. Eventually one of them became an object of a crime scene, so the story opened about these five friends, united in their common benefits, which turned later into an exciting who did it puzzle game. They started to fight each other, all with their own excuse and where they don;t trust each other anymore. Through mystery building flash-backs, the movie lead to several clever twists and turns. I won't be giving away anything more about this movie, cause this would ruin the experience, but in some ways you would be amazed by the ending.
  • xterminal
    June 10, 2011
    xterminal
    Loft (Erik van Looy, 2008)

    Erik van Looy, a prolific short and TV director, has made just four feature films over the past decade. And if you live in America, the chances that you saw the first two (one of which, for the record, stars Mickey Rourke) are pretty slim. But... read more his third, The Memory of a Killer, should have made van Looy a household name. It is the kind of movie that you walk out of, if you lock in with the director's rhythm, having become a lifelong fan of everyone involved. It was made during the unfortunately-brief period when it seemed like every really good up-and-coming European director was making fantastic neo-noir crime thrillers-Fresnadillo's Intacto, The Memory of a Killer, Babulani's 13 Tzameti, Audiard's The Beat that My Heart Skipped, easily a dozen more. They're all brilliant. (I've said more than once that while I can never quite get my head around what's so great about the French New Wave, I understand the feeling those critics rave about when I watch those early-21st-century Eurocrime movies, which are just as much a movement.) And thus I awaited van Looy's next effort with bated breath. Even more so when I discovered that it contained a role for Jean Decleir, the killer from that previously-mentioned van Looy film. (If that's your main reason for seeing it, his role is little more than a cameo.) And when I finally got round to being able to see it-Hollywood is in the process of remaking it, which makes it difficult to find in America-it was quite a letdown. It's a stylish little mystery/thriller, don't get me wrong, but the style is really all there is to it. It's quite conventional, and more importantly, predictable if you've seen enough movies in the genre to consider yourself a fan.

    Plot: five friends hatch a plot to keep a swank loft as a place where they can take their dalliances. Chris (Koen de Bouw, also returning from The Memory of a Killer), the ringleader, only makes five keys for the place, and each of them has one. So when the body of a young woman turns up in the loft, there are obviously only five suspects, and the five friends realize they don't know one another nearly as well as they previously thought. The more they dig into the mystery, the more dirty laundry appears...

    Loft, IMDB's trivia section tells us, is the most well-attended Belgian film in history in its native country, with over 1.1 million paid admissions (the previous record-holder, Koko Flanel, came in at 1.09 million. As a side note, it, too, contains Jean Decleir). And if you look at it as what would happen if Agatha Christie, say, had penned a Schwarzenegger flick, where less stuff blows up but there's the same element of turn-of-your-brain-and-have-a-good-time, that makes perfect sense. It's a stock plot with stock characters, a few expected twists thrown in by the expected characters. It's safe. It's the same kind of predictability you get when you walk into a Schwarzie flick; you know beyond any reasonable doubt even before the movie begins that Ahhnold will still be alive at the end, probably grinning and giving the camera a thumbs-up. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and if you're looking for something safe that doesn't require a great deal of thought, I can't recommend this highly enough. But if you're looking for a worthy follow-up to The Memory of a Killer, you'll have to wait for it until van Looy is finished trying (and, like most other European directors who find themselves in Hollywood's clutches, probably failing) to make a decent movie within the Hollywood machine. ***
  • sitenoise
    October 19, 2009
    sitenoise
    Most of the tension in this film is created by trying to keep the clichéd plot points fresh as they unravel and inevitably teeter on the edge of going over the top. It's all done pretty well and it looks good, as good as any Hollywood thriller. The set design is minimal and trés ... read moremodern, the cinematography mostly dark with touches of yellow and gray filters, and the soundtrack nudges you along with obvious clues. The story is presented through flashbacks and multiple interrogations so one is easily lead astray only to learn there's another side to the story as another deep dark secret is revealed. As soon as you think it's ho-hum, another shoe drops. The screenwriter must live in a Loft with a very big closet. The goodness of the twist factor here is achieved more through quantity than quality. This is not only a whodunit but a whodunwhat.

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Critic Reviews

Boyd van Hoeij
January 20, 2009
Boyd van Hoeij, Variety

A tightly drawn, atmospheric thriller that has one false bottom too many to qualify as great. Full Review

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Loft Trivia

  • Viggo Mortensen actually did the pictures you see in the loft on A Perfect Murder.  Answer »
  • In which film does Uncle Frank spend his time in the loft trying to solve a puzzle ?  Answer »
  • In "The Ghost & Mr. Chicken," what does Luther say when he discovers the secret staircase to the organ loft?  Answer »
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