Review of Loft

Loft (I) (2008)
Has the Charged Tension of A Hitchcock Thriller.
4 February 2014
Full of twists & turns from start to finish, Loft concerns a group of 5 friends, all of them married, who share the ownership of a secret loft together where they meet their mistresses. One day, they find a woman's dead body lying in the room but there are only 5 keys to the apartment, meaning that one of them is probably involved in what appears to be a cold-blooded murder. And thus begins the blame game where each person begins suspecting the other one of committing the crime & collectively try to solve the mystery before police come knocking at the door.

Directed by Erik Van Looy, the film smartly intertwines present with flashbacks to give viewers the backstory of each of its characters & create fresh doubts in their minds about who could be the real suspect among these. The writing is equally good too as each character is presented in a grey shade, thus making it difficult for the viewers to converge on a single suspect until the film reveals all on its own. The acting is quite convincing by its ensemble cast, cinematography makes great use of lighting, editing is brilliantly carried out & the music is a big plus here.

There is no denying that viewers will try to solve this mysterious puzzle as soon as the film begins since no time is wasted in taking a linear approach and yet, the film will be able to surprise most of them not once but multiple times. On an overall scale, Loft is an amazing mystery thriller that is cleverly plotted, has an atmosphere of tension & suspicion from the very beginning, is perplexing but never confusing to the extent that makes the viewers reject it outright & didn't put a foot wrong until the film's third act, which is the only part that disappointed me though not majorly & will even work for most.

Out of the very few Belgian films that I've seen so far, this one is arguably my new favorite as of now. And I've no problem in recommending this film to anyone for it has the charged tension of a Hitchcock thriller & really deserves a wider audience. So, give it a try before Hollywood comes up with a remake, which actually is coming out later this year, probably in August, helmed by director Van Looy only.
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