One of my favorite sci-fi microgenres ever is “people get trapped in a home and have to figure their way out.” It can be played for eeriness like in Vivarium, for gore like in pretty much all the Saw movies, or for a sci-fi slasher like Await Further Instrucions. Trapping any people in their homes is an instant way to build suspense and terror, but if you add an otherworldly force on the outside, things get a lot more interesting.
Netflix is the latest streamer to take on this premise with Brick, written and directed by Philip Koch and starring Matthias Schweighöfer, a close collaborator with Zack Snyder from Army of the Dead and Army of Thieves. With a dwindling-party plot and a mystery full of clues, it’s far more enjoyable than its often paint-by-numbers exposition and direction.
Brick follows Tim (Schweighöfer), a workaholic game dev who lives with his long-suffering girlfriend Liv (Ruby O. Fee, Schweighöfer’s real-life partner). Liv longs for a more spontaneous life and surprises Tim with a camper van and a grand plan to drive to Paris, but Tim rejects the idea since he has so many vague zoom calls to attend and deadlines to hit. Liv gets fed up and tries to leave forever, only to find a strange graphite-gray wall in their doorway completely blocking the exit.
Suddenly, the domestic drama becomes a survival thriller as the two put aside their differences to find a way out. With the doors and windows blocked, there’s only one way out: busting down walls to find other survivors in the building. As they move from apartment to apartment in their run-down apartment building, they’re forced to address secrets not only in their relationship but in the building itself.
They amass a crew of survivors, from the couple staying in the AirBnB next door to the grumpy old man and his granddaughter living below, but the more they try to figure out the secrets of the door, the deadlier the action gets. Much like other survival movies like The Poseidon Adventure, each new obstacle seem to rack up the body count as the outside force and the interior pressure builds to a breaking point.
Despite the grim drama and thrills, there are still some glimmers of a fun story, like the character who ticks the Netflix synergy box by suggesting they’re all players in some version of Squid Game, or the interesting satire on modern domestic life. By the time you actually see what’s going on outside, the mystery is just about to wear out its welcome, and the reveal provides a much-needed release. Even though the explanation isn’t completely satisfying, it makes sense.
Brick is by no means an innovative-looking movie. There are only a few ways to shoot the same rooms over and over again, and even Schweighöfer’s direction on Army of Thieves was more creative than this. But this fresh take on a classic premise makes it the perfect movie to throw on — just do yourself a favor and watch it in the original German with subtitles, as the English dub doesn’t do the story justice.
