‘Brick’ review: A German couple hits the wall in satisfying Netflix thriller

Dir/scr: Philip Koch. Germany. 2025. 99mins

A Twilight Zone-style premise is spun into an entertaining what’s-going-on thriller in Brick, Philip Koch’s tale of a couple who find themselves entombed in their apartment by a black brick wall. This Netflix title should satisfy genre fans and attract a wider mainstream audience drawn by the intriguing premise, and healthy viewing figures seem likely when it bows on the streamer in multiple territories, including Germany, the US and UK, on July 10 following its world premiere at Munich. 

A satisfying, watchable audience-pleaser

Koch, best known for television series Tribes Of Europa (2021) and hard-hitting borstal drama Picco (2010), wastes little time getting to the heart of his story. Workaholic games programmer Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer, Oppenheimer, Amrum) and his architect partner Olivia (Ruby O Fee) are a couple at a crossroads. Their lives are defined by loss, stress, silence and empty promises. One evening, Olivia announces she has quit her job and purchased a camper van, inviting Tim to run away and make a fresh start together. His refusal to leave is something they will come to regret.

Koch plants what may or may not be early clues as to what is about to unfold – extensive work on their entire apartment block is coming to an end, palls of dense, grey smoke hang in the distant sky marking a fire in HafenCity, near Hamburg. Cinematographer Alexander Fischerkoesen gives any outdoor scene a larger than life, dreamlike quality as light dazzles and colours glow.

When Olivia awakens the next morning, she discovers every window and door of their apartment is blocked by an impenetrable, black brick wall. There is no electricity, no running water and, even more alarming for any modern urbanite, no wi-fi connection. Trying to figure out what has happened is the starting point of a situation that escalates quickly from bafflement to the certainty they are both going to die. On one level, the ordeal that follows is a very extreme way of testing their relationship to breaking point, in the hope it may be able to heal.

Smashing through a wall into another apartment liberates the story from its initial claustrophobic setting and allows Koch to introduce other characters. These include drugged-up lovebirds Marvin (Frederick Lau, bringing doltish comic relief) and Ana (Salber Lee Williams); the elderly Oswalt (Axel Werner) and his granddaughter Lea (Sira-Anna Faal); and policeman Yuri (Murathan Muslu, who seems to be channelling Hans Gruber-era Alan Rickman). Production designer Theresa Anna Ficus deftly sets the tone of each new apartment, with Marvin and Ana’s garish Airbnb love nest all purple and neon.

Every fresh character brings something to the mix, positioning themselves on the spectrum between cautious and impetuous, thoughtful and gung-ho. Marvin suggests they are trapped in a “twisted escape room” or some Matrix-like multiverse, and indeed there are echoes of other movies from Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (1997) to Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium (2019). There is even some consideration of whether the brick wall is not keeping them in, but keeping out some unknown threat.

Brick proceeds at pace, adopting some of the template from old-school disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) as we await the next revelation and latest challenge, and discover who will survive. Koch shows a good sense of pace and momentum as bursts of action are leavened with some dry humour. His screenplay remains credible and involving, until it loses some of the wind from its sails when the group starts piecing together the mysteries of the wall. More conventional in its later stages, Brick is still a satisfying and watchable audience-pleaser.