Brick

I finished watching Brick with the feeling that I had just seen a thriller more concerned with what it doesn't say than with what it reveals. Philip Koch builds his story on a compelling premise — an entire building sealed off by an impenetrable black wall, a visual metaphor for a fractured soul — but his execution wavers between functional genre filmmaking and an emotional drama that never truly comes to life.

The setup is instantly captivating: Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer) and Olivia (Ruby O. Fee), a couple reeling from personal tragedy, find their world confined by a sudden and inexplicable wall. The early scenes flirt with claustrophobia, drawing inevitable comparisons to Escape Room, Cube, and The Platform. But rather than dive into gore or pure horror, Koch takes a quieter route: the wall becomes a symbol of mourning, of emotional shutdown, of the unspoken trauma that traps two people in an invisible war of grief and resentment.

In this direction, the film does achieve genuine moments of impact. The camera often lingers on the cracks, glides around the characters, and pulls intimacy out of tight, suffocating spaces. The production design — praised in multiple reviews — delivers a tactile, oppressive atmosphere that strengthens the film’s emotional claustrophobia. But the thoughtful cinematography alone can’t sustain a script that stumbles between heavy symbolism and a conventional thriller structure.

Performance-wise, Schweighöfer and Fee are strong. He internalizes guilt in long silences; she carries a quiet strength, the look of someone already halfway gone. Their chemistry works not just because they are a real-life couple, but because their characters resist each other authentically. And yet, the film too often undercuts them with clunky exposition — dialogue that overexplains the metaphor or spells out emotions that would be more powerful left unsaid.

This problem worsens when the supporting cast arrives: a grandfather with an oxygen tank, a curious granddaughter, a paranoid neighbor named Yuri. All feel like sketches — archetypes designed to build tension rather than real people. They serve the plot well enough but lack depth, contributing little to the emotional journey.

Still, there’s one standout moment: Olivia’s frustrated attempt to destroy the wall with a drill and hammer. Her failure is palpable. The tools, her rage, her tears — they all land harder than any line of dialogue. In that silence, the metaphor finally breathes: you can’t break through grief with brute force.

Unfortunately, the metaphor collapses in the final act. A twist reveals the wall as a nanotech security system gone wrong. It’s an answer that satisfies the thriller formula but drains the emotional weight the film had so carefully built. Instead of a character study wrapped in mystery, we end up with a sci-fi premise that dilutes the drama.

The good: delicate direction, strong atmosphere, heartfelt performances from the leads, and a clear, timely metaphor about emotional walls. The bad: an overly explanatory script, flat supporting characters, and a second half that loses the human center in favor of narrative convenience.

If you’re drawn to psychological thrillers that flirt with existential themes — and don’t mind a film that sometimes says too much and reveals too little — Brick has worthwhile elements. Just don’t expect it to reinvent the genre. It aims for profound emotional impact but only grazes the surface.



Brick (2025 / Germany)
Direction: Philip Koch
Screenplay: Philip Koch
Cast: Matthias Schweighöfer, Ruby O. Fee, Frederick Lau, Murathan Muslu, Sira‑Anna Faal, Axel Werner
Running Time: 99 min.