'Brick' review: Sci-fi thriller thinks personal space is overrated

Netflix

How isn't a movie about interacting with your neighbours advertised as horror? After all, very few things can be so terrifying. On that note, let's watch how some people deal with a brickly situation in, well, Brick (same title used in Germany). Olivia (Ruby O. Fee) and Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer) are a couple experiencing a rough patch in their relationship, her wanting them to leave their come country of Germany and get a fresh start elsewhere while he's disappearing into his work as a video game developer, less willing to take off and leave. Tensions reach a boiling point in an extraordinary fashion when one morning, they find themselves trapped in their apartment as a mysterious, unbreakable wall surrounds it. Trying to figure out what's going on, the duo is eventually joined by neighbours Ana (Salber Lee Williams), Marvin (Frederick Lau), Lea (Sira-Anna Faal), Oswalt (Axel Werner) and Yuri (Murathan Muslu).

High concepts like these tend to require high-quality craftsmanship and one or more somewhat relatable aspects to go beyond the gimmick, and what writer-director Philip Koch seemingly sets out to do within these boundaries is to create a classical relationship drama. There's a very straightforward way to unlock it all as we discover new layers and details about Olivia and Tim's dilemma with each wall or floor that they break or another floor they descend to. We learn about a baby elephant in the room that hasn't been unpacked yet, which has then destroyed their ways of communicating with each other. You see them explore feelings about whether they share the same objectives anymore and both actors portray all of this anxiety pretty well throughout, but the problem is that the conflict doesn't have a unique angle to hook you and the dialogue is merely average so none of it is super affecting either.

When you're not truly wishing for the main couple to find the same frequency again or rooting for them to break up for good, and no one in the cast pops, much of the intellectual and entertainment value falls on the shoulders of the filmmaking. Sadly, every single element falls slightly short in terms of becoming the thing you want to talk about afterwards.

Koch's direction is perfectly competent, as are the action beats featuring the odd stunt. Composers Anna Drubich, Martina Eisenreich and Michael Kadelbach get perhaps the closest to dazzling you with a magic trick as they use house and video game-esque production to spice up the oppressive mood in the actual compositions, but a few orchestral cues don't harmonise with the other stuff at all and they desperately try to compensate for the lack of sincerity in the relationship drama. Theresia Anna Ficus' production design team had the most potential to flex their artistic muscles, and the end result is slick and looks quite nice, but it never reaches the upper echelons when it comes to the science fiction thriller genre or films featuring escape rooms, confined spaces and dystopian world-building.

For what it's worth, the film gets in and out rather swiftly with its tight 95-minute runtime so worse ways to spend an evening certainly exist. Harmless and somewhat enjoyable popcorn sci-fi? Can't get mad at that. But when you're cooking such a familiar recipe, you do need to add at least one special ingredient to stand out, and Brick never finds one. Therefore you shouldn't expect too much if you decide to check it out.

Smileys: None

Frowneys: None

Do you ever wake up, find out that you can't get out of your apartment and wonder what the brick happened?

2.5/5

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