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Way back in 1997,a Canadian sci-fi/horror film titledCubebecame a video-store cult hitthanks to its clever story, which finds six strangers waking up one day trapped in a series of deadly, interconnected rooms and having to solve a series of puzzles and challenges to escape … or die trying. The film spawned a sequel, a prequel, anda Japanese remake, and its DNA leaked into the escape-room craze that would follow a handful of years later and spawn a whole new generation of similar, largely single-location “puzzle-box movies,” where the characters doubled as game pieces and the “game” became their whole frightening reality. The newest addition to this genre is Netflix’s German-language thrillerBrick.
At first glance,Brickseems to have a lot in common withCube, as it tells the story of a group of renters who become trapped inside their building when a mysterious, almost alien black wall surrounds their apartments, covering their doors and windows and locking them inside with seemingly no way to escape. The difference here is that, until the end, it’s never actually clear if there’s a game afoot inBrick. Maybe there is. Or maybe the black wall is serving a different purpose entirely. Maybe it’s meant toprotectthose trapped within. It’s inside those margins thatBrickattempts to become something different, somethingmorethan just a “solve the puzzle and escape” movie, butthe questions it poses and the answers it ultimately gives aren’t compelling enough to make this film a stand-outin its sub-genre.
What Is ‘Brick’ About?
Brick’s two primary characters are a still somewhat young-ish couple — Tim and Liv — played by real-life partners andArmy of Thievesco-starsMatthias Schweighöfer(Oppenheimer) andRuby O. Fee(Polar). Tim and Liv’s relationship hasn’t been the same since they lost their child in a horrible miscarriage, and the movie opens with Liv giving Tim one last chance to chart a new beginning with her. Tim remains emotionally stalled, however, and Liv decides to leave him the following morning. If only she could. When the two awaken,they find that their apartment has been encased in a carbon-black, magnetic brick wallthat seems to exhibit almost supernatural properties. The bricks aren’t normal-sized bricks, but rather cubes and rectangles of different shapes and sizes that almost look likea randomTetrisboard. With their personal problems still lingering and the building’s water shut off, the two go about trying to figure out how to escape their small apartment before they starve to death.
They can’t break through the bricks covering every possible exit, but they do figure out that they can bore through their apartment wall into the next unit, where their druggy neighbors are even more freaked out than they are. Floors and ceilings are also fair game, and Tim and Liv eventually pick up a whole crew of apartment dwellers — all trapped — who band together looking for a way out. The problem is,the more neighboring apartments they break into, the deeper the mystery goes.The Superhost who’s subleasing at least some of the apartments is an early suspect, but he’s found dead with his hands cut off. A different dead body is found another floor or two down, and this guy was obsessed with cracking a secret code that he felt was hidden within the mystery wall’s brick pattern. Maybe the notes he left behind will offer a solution? Or maybe not, as a different neighbor passionately argues that the wall is there for a reason — to protect them from some unknown horror, perhaps a war, that’s burning the world down outside their walls.
‘Brick’s Central Mystery Turns Out to Be a Dud
Brick’s set-up is fine, if a bit overly familiar, and its characters all feel sketched in enough that nobody comes across as strictly a stereotype. Schweighöfer and Fee are both good at playing a couple who probably should be together but can’t find a way forward … until they’re literally forced to. But while their performances are sturdy, the film too subtly addresses their repairing relationship for it to carry any sort of emotional oomph. Writer/directorPhilip Kochshoots his characters in tight close-ups and through the various busted-out holes connecting all the apartments. The black brick wall itself reveals itself to be a not-altogether-convincing digital effect that feels more and more like a video-game graphic the more the movie’s FX team asks it to do.
Bricktackles conspiracy thinking and fast-spreading paranoia among its themes, and it isn’t afraid to drop a pop-culture reference when it needs to. (BothSquid GameandThe Matrixget name-dropped at different points.) All of that’s well and good, but the big problem here is that, though the characters stumble upon a hidden room and technological secrets are revealed to be in play, the film’s central mystery never really develops into anything all that interesting. In fact, asBrickenters its final act, the wall feels less likea fascinating puzzle to solveand more like a monotonous problem to overcome. By the time we arrive at the film’s “twist” ending — which is meant to be shocking but, honestly, fails to elicit much more than a shrug — it has become apparent thatBrickhas more in common with a bottom-tierBlack Mirrorepisodethan it does a true sci-fi puzzle-box movie likeCube. It does a lot of little things competently, but doesn’t do any one thing exceedingly well, leaving it feeling like a genre exercise in search of a story worth telling.
Brickis now streaming on Netflix.
‘Brick’ fails to offer a compelling solution to its central mystery.
