The Loft (2014)

I recently obtained a large stack of blu-rays for cheap and this movie was among them.  I randomly chose this one to watch, as I’m a sucker for a good thriller.  The film was well shot, the acting good.  Lots of pretty people, and locations.  Much of the dialogue was hormonal teenager and frat boy and surface level deep.  The premise completely questionable, the plot rather ridiculous but believable given the set up, turned ridiculous as time went on - it still offered some twists and kept me guessing the whole time.  

In summary: this is five friends acting like self absorbed pigs and behaving badly and covering for each other.  The whole thing is a train wreck of characters who were tempting disaster.  A line that illustrates the biggest problems with this film comes from one of the leads to his brother, “we don’t treat women like that.” After their brother raped and beat a girl.  Which is so profoundly twisted coming from someone who is cheating on their wife (they all are) and then cover for his brother's crimes.  Somehow they write this in as if this line makes them on some higher moral ground.  

Despite all of this, somehow I still could watch it even if goes against my standards. Mostly because I just wanted to know what happened and wondered if there would be some redemption for any one of these characters. Nope, it’s a modern thriller, that with a little more effort could have reworked the script to have someone who may have better motives and character instead we get lazy writing with very very very questionable men who every woman in the film, simply made the “mistake of falling for the wrong guy” and the guys still end up getting away with their crimes and behaviors and the women are just props and objects.  There is no depth to anyone in this film and that is too bad because the story actually had some potential to become something completely different.