Written and directed by Philip Koch, the German sci-fi thriller premiered on Netflix on July 10 and is among Netflix’s top 10 movies. It narrates the story of Olivia (played by Ruby O Fee) and Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer), a married couple who wake up in the middle of the night to discover that they are caged in their own home as their apartment gets sealed with solid black brick walls made out of nanotechnology.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Brick ending explained
The movie opens with the distressed married couple, Olivia and Tim, who lost their baby two years ago. One fine morning, Olivia decides to leave her husband due to the distance between them after they lost their child and intends to walk out of their apartment. The only problem is, she just couldn’t step out, as the doors, windows, and even vents – everything is blocked with black bricks. When they try to understand what it is and how it was built overnight, they are unsuccessful, as the bricks won’t break with a drilling machine, sledgehammer, or even gunshots. Soon, they realise that those brick walls have magnetic fields around them.
Soon, they realise that not only are they caged inside their own apartment, but the water supply has also been shut off, and as days pass, the food supply also runs out. As they are cut off from the outside world, they learn that their entire building has been blocked, and other residents are also locked inside their apartments. The couple then decides to break through the walls and floors adjacent to other apartments to go down to the basement, and they meet their other neighbours.
As tension reaches a breaking point, betrayals and violence lead to deadly circumstances. They soon learn that the brick walls are a high-tech nanotechnology defense system developed by a company called Epsilon Nondefense to protect the citizens from any kind of catastrophe after a fire broke out in the neighbourhood locality.
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The system was meant to deploy in emergencies to protect citizens, but a massive fire at the Epsilon facility accidentally triggered it across the entire city of Hamburg, Germany. One of the residents of the building had secretly developed an app capable of opening a breach in the walls by emitting a specific light sequence, but was killed by another tenant.
Tim is finally able to identify the code by putting together security footage and hidden clues. The couple then successfully activates the code and walks through a tunnel, leading them to the outside world, but only to discover that the entire city is sealed inside the same brick wall structures. A radio broadcast reveals that authorities are unreachable and there is no sign of rescue. Tim and Olivia then leave the city, ready to face whatever comes next.