Netflix’s Brick (2025), directed by Philip Koch and starring Matthias Schweighöfer, Ruby O. Payment, and Frederick Lau, is a claustrophobic escape-room-styled thriller. The story revolves round a distant couple, Tim and Liv, who get up to discover their total constructing mysteriously sealed in by impenetrable black partitions in a single day. As they dig deeper (each actually and metaphorically), they uncover a authorities glitch, a deranged conspiracy theorist, and a sequence of deadly penalties. Whereas the movie doesn’t break new floor by way of style innovation, it delivers a tense, compact expertise that’s excellent for viewers who get pleasure from contained thrillers with high-stakes drama and a thriller on the core.
If Brick piqued your curiosity, you’re seemingly craving extra tales of individuals trapped in surreal, high-concept situations — tales that discover survival, methods of management, psychological pressure, and sci-fi paranoia. Beneath are 7 films like Brick on Netflix and past, every echoing its themes or story construction in some type or one other.
1. Dice (1997)
Earlier than escape-room thrillers turned fashionable, Dice pioneered the idea. Directed by Vincenzo Natali, the movie revolves round a gaggle of strangers who get up inside an enormous, mysterious construction composed of interlocking cubic rooms. Every room has six doorways main to adjoining rooms, however lots of them are rigged with lethal traps. Because the group tries to discover a approach out, tensions rise, and private dynamics shift—particularly as they notice that every member would possibly possess a particular ability wanted to survive.
Like Brick, Dice is ready fully in a confined area, with characters pressured to piece collectively a bigger puzzle with minimal clues. The strain lies within the unknown — who constructed the entice, why, and the way to escape — echoing the questions Tim and Liv face concerning the black partitions surrounding their constructing.
2. Escape Room (2019)
On this fast-paced thriller, six strangers are invited to a extremely immersive escape room expertise with the promise of a big money prize. Nonetheless, as soon as inside, they rapidly uncover that the rooms usually are not simply puzzles — they’re lethal traps designed to kill anybody who fails to resolve them. Every room is intricately themed (a freezing cabin, an upside-down billiard bar, a burning oven, and many others.), and the survivors should rely on their wits and teamwork to keep alive. As the sport progresses, they notice that they had been all chosen for a motive, with their traumatic pasts linked to every puzzle.
Each movies use the escape room idea as a metaphor for survival and psychological torment. In Brick, the partitions themselves are a part of a mysterious system. In Escape Room, the setting turns into more and more sinister with each degree. If you really liked the suspense in films like Brick, this one’s a should.
3. ARQ (2016)
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Set in a single location, ARQ is a time-loop sci-fi thriller the place a pair repeatedly wakes up throughout a house invasion in a dystopian future. Directed by Tony Elliott (a author on Orphan Black) and starring Robbie Amell and Rachael Taylor, the setting is a future the place firms and insurgent factions are at warfare over vitality, with the movie going down virtually fully in a single home and unfolding over a sequence of time loops.
The story follows Renton, an engineer who has invented a machine known as the ARQ, which may generate limitless vitality — however it additionally traps him in a repeating time loop. The husband and spouse relive the identical violent sequence, they usually notice the loop could also be tied to a robust vitality supply that considered one of them created.
Like Brick, ARQ focuses on a pair making an attempt to reconnect whereas navigating a techno-mystery that unravels piece by piece. The locked-in setting, using know-how gone improper, and the emotional core of a fractured relationship make ARQ really feel like one of many closest films like Brick on Netflix.
4. Circle (2015)
Fifty folks get up in a black room. Each two minutes, considered one of them dies — they usually should resolve who deserves to stay. There’s no escape, no clear solutions, and the clock is ticking. Directed by Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione, Circle is a minimalist psychological sci-fi thriller that explores human morality beneath excessive strain. As talked about above, the strangers discover themselves in a room the place considered one of them is killed by an unseen pressure each different thoughts, however they quickly notice that they’re controlling the eliminations by vote, with out dialogue or any bodily interplay. They should rapidly resolve who lives and who dies, as they try to perceive the foundations of the sport and one another’s motivations.
Very similar to the group in Brick, the characters in Circle are pressured to reckon with each other whereas making an attempt to survive an unexplained entice. The ethical dilemmas, the sense of dread, and the battle in opposition to an invisible enemy align carefully with the tone of Brick.
5. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg and produced by J.J. Abrams, 10 Cloverfield Lane, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, and John Gallagher Jr. The movie follows Michelle (Winstead) waking up after a automobile accident to discover herself locked in an underground bunker. Her captor, Howard (Goodman), insists he saved her life and {that a} catastrophic occasion has made the skin world uninhabitable. Alongside one other bunker resident, Emmett, Michelle should resolve whether or not Howard is a paranoid doomsday prepper—or if the menace outdoors is definitely actual.
Yuri’s conspiratorial mindset in Brick is minimize from the identical fabric as John Goodman’s character right here. Each movies faucet into themes of mistrust, gaslighting, and the blurred line between security and captivity. For followers of tension-driven films like Brick, it is a excellent subsequent watch.
6. Await Additional Directions (2018)
Await Additional Directions facilities on the dysfunctional Milgram household—Nick, his girlfriend Annji, his dad and mom, sister, brother-in-law, and grandfather—gathered for Christmas when a mysterious black membrane envelops their suburban house.
Their solely contact with the skin world is an ominous message on their tv: “Keep indoors and await additional directions.” Because the TV delivers extra dire instructions—warning of contaminated meals, urging bleach use, demanding injections—the household’s paranoia spirals into distrust, violence, and grotesque penalties.
The premise of the Brick and Await Additional Directions is sort of equivalent: a family trapped by an unknown pressure, struggling to decode its origin whereas their unity deteriorates. If Brick left you questioning what you’d do in such a surreal lockdown, Await Additional Directions pushes that dread even additional.
7. Vivarium (2019)
A pair wanting to purchase their first house will get trapped in a suburban nightmare — a surreal, copy-paste neighborhood with no exit. Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg), after being deserted by their actual property agent, discover themselves unable to escape and are quickly pressured to elevate a quickly rising, inhuman baby delivered in a field with the promise of launch upon completion.
As the times move in a loop of eerie home routine, the couple slowly unravels beneath the load of isolation, despair, and the grotesque parody of parenthood.
Very similar to Brick, Vivarium is a type of films that makes use of domesticity as the start line for a deeper existential horror. Each of them dissect relationships beneath excessive strain and use bodily entrapment as a metaphor for emotional and societal confinement.
