Image: Netflix
From the ideas of creator/director Philip Koch (Sixty Minutes, Tribes of Europa), Brick is the modern mysterious sci-fi thriller starring frequent Netflix collaborator Matthias Schweighöfer and his Military of Thieves co-famous particular person Ruby O. Fee. While Brick makes 3 Netflix Fashioned movies for O. Fee, Schweighöfer has now starred in 6 movies, kicking off with his breakout role in Zack Snyder’s Military of the Tiresome in 2021.
Shot in Prague in a custom-built house advanced namely for the movie, Brick tells the sage of Tim & Olivia (Schweighöfer & O. Fee naturally), a pair going thru the motions and barely conserving their relationship afloat following a tense loss. After a final-ditch strive by Olivia to maintain the spark alive goes awry, she decides to pack her things and disappear, most efficient to search out their house is totally shut in. All their doors, windows, & exterior partitions are totally sealed off by a heart-broken series of brick-admire shapes with a texture and in fact feel totally unlike anything else they’ve ever encountered.
With no conversation, no technology, and no motive gradual these events, Tim & Olivia work collectively seeking solutions and a map out of this confusing, mysterious, & claustrophobic nightmare. Breaking down partitions and flooring between flats, they devise the abet of their neighbors to wait on in their mission to disappear. Nonetheless as they plan closer to finding a map out, modern forces & rising tensions get extra ways to maintain them in.
Joining Schweighöfer & Ruby O. Fee in this condensed solid are Frederick Lau (Crooks) as Gael, Salber Lee Williams (The Queen’s Gambit) as Ana, Murathan Muslu (Barbarians) as Yuri, Alexander Beyer (The Lives of Others) as Friedman, Sira-Anna Faal as Lea, & Axel Werner as Oswalt.
Image: Netflix
Brick follows a conventional puzzle field space constructing that entices the viewer with an unexplained match that entices and engages its target market while slowly answering the quiz alongside the map. Some of my popular movies & TV reveals (in particular the works of Damon Lindelof) follow this constructing extremely neatly, in overall making the characters and the right & philosophical quandaries they endure so titillating that the thriller takes a backseat to the meatier space entanglements. Unfortunately, Brick doesn’t pause great to excite & entice its target market beyond the poorly rendered CGI wall of bewilderment.
The movie is an evident, poorly performed genre mix that doesn’t pause any of these genres in particular neatly. The science fiction doesn’t derive that technical because the thriller largely gets solved by a needless man and mostly correct came all over by a video game programmer, an architect, & a series of bumbling, drug-addled, paranoid neighbors who don’t add great to the proceedings. The thriller facets don’t kick in except halfway thru the movie and are repeatedly derailed by Koch’s downhearted exercise of drama and pointless, painful-to-glimpse philosophical musings.
The movie correct wishes to cry “He built a wall spherical himself emotionally, derive it?! He needed to interrupt down these partitions to derive thru THESE partitions, GET IT?!” while every so continuously searching to derive deeper with the “why us?” conundrum that tries to trauma bond the characters collectively in a fruitless, nauseating, extraordinarily forced map conducted by aspect characters who don’t deserve extra backstory.
Brick’s sage constructing feels admire a relic of a worth range, tiny Covid-pleasant productions that got greenlit a handful of years up to now, created spherical 1-2 station settings with minimal characters who mostly possess to reckon with confinement, political/social commentary, conspiracy theorists, or all of the above. With so quite loads of these movies coming and going already, it looks too runt & too gradual for Brick to invent an impact, despite the indisputable fact that it used to be made neatly (it in fact wasn’t).
The toughest fragment to square up is what the target market is presupposed to rob away from such a sage. Surveillance is correct because this may perhaps perchance moreover honest provide you the entire solutions? Persistently imagine the tech man over the conspiracy theorist/doomsday believer, despite the indisputable fact that what they are saying is totally plausible? Persistently guess that something obvious will occur, even whilst you possess got runt or no basis to circulation on? Don’t belief your neighbors? Put emergency messages over radio frequencies that they know can’t penetrate the partitions? If anyone has any solutions, I’m prepared to concentrate.
Brick; Matthias Schweighöfer Brick; Cr. Courtesy of Netflix ©2025
On a obvious display conceal, one in every of the main causes I used to be indignant to fireplace this movie up used to be the casting of Schweighöfer & Ruby O. Fee, and to boot they were not the motive this movie failed to prevail. In actuality, outside of an reasonably priced but diminutive performance from Murathan Muslu as Yuri, they combine for one in every of the rare shiny spots in the movie. While the writing will allow them to down, the duo tries their most efficient to raise unearned dramatic tension and ship the target market again from prolonged stretches of fledgling supporting characters. Their familiarity from Military of Thieves proved precious to give this movie something to hold to when the sage goes wayward.
Total, Brick largely wastes the puzzle field intrigue & leading duo of Schweighöfer and Ruby O. Fee with a poorly written screenplay devoid of stable characters, right motivations, engaging clue constructing, & a-ha thriller displays. For the entire questions of “what’s this?” and “why is this going on?”, the target market will mostly be left asking “What used to be the point?”
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As I famed them as one in every of the rare positives in the movie earlier in this overview, I’ll maintain this one easy: When this leading duo is on the heart of the movie’s attention, the movie is better for it. Surprisingly, this occurs less usually than you suspect, which is fragment of the motive the movie doesn’t prevail. A sprinkle of humor for two actors that can totally ham it up neatly would possess improved this one immensely. Soundless right to appear again collectively after the enjoyable (and presumably underrated) Military of Thieves.
While the leading solid and preliminary fascinations may perhaps well moreover honest ship you to this one, you won’t create anything else else when the movie is over.
Gape my checklist of popular modern movie releases of 2025 up to now.
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