Brick 2025 Movie Review
At first, it looks like it’s going to be a good movie. A simple but powerful premise: a couple on the verge of emotional collapse wakes up to find their apartment sealed off by a mysterious black wall. From there, you might expect a mix of tension, claustrophobic sci-fi, and psychological drama. And for a while, Brick delivers. But then, it loses its way.
The beginning works: Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer) buries himself in work, Olivia (Ruby O. Fee) wants to run from a relationship that feels empty. Just when she decides to leave, the whole building shuts down. No signal, no water, no windows. At first, you’re hooked because you’re asking the same questions they are: what’s going on? Why them? What’s behind those walls?
But soon the script starts to stumble. More characters show up, each with their own set of clichés: the shady cop, the troubled young couple, the sick old man, the innocent granddaughter… and instead of adding tension, they dilute it. The relationships that could have meant something stay flat, and the central mystery – the wall, the entrapment, the “why” – fades as the story drifts into forced dialogue and scenes that go nowhere.
You can tell the director wants to explore grief, emotional isolation, and the inner walls we build. And to some extent, he does, especially thanks to the lead performances, which are the best thing here. But with the supporting characters adding little, the pacing turns uneven and the emotional weight the story aimed for gets lost along the way.
Visually, it’s decent. The production design creates an effective atmosphere, and there are moments when the oppressive mood comes through. But then come the scenes that try to be action or conspiratorial thriller, and it all falls apart. Brick wants to be a lot: a drama, a mystery, a social horror, a critique of fake news… but in the end, it never fully commits to any of them.
The resolution doesn’t help either. The “reason” behind the confinement tries to close things out with symbolic meaning, but it doesn’t quite land. It feels like the journey was supposed to matter more than the answer. That’s fine, but even the journey ends up feeling incomplete.
It’s not a disaster. There are interesting ideas, a few well-done scenes, and a mood that works in some places. But everything it could have been – intense, meaningful, unsettling – ends up as just “almost.” It doesn’t quite bore, but it doesn’t move you either, and for a story about being trapped, that’s a problem.
