Rating: C+
Dir: Philip Koch
Star: Matthias Schweighöfer, Ruby O. Fee, Frederick Lau, Salber Lee Williams
When overnight a mysterious brick wall encloses their apartment building in Hamburg (Germany), Tim (Schweighofer) and Olivia (Fee) must unite with their neighbours to get out before their dwindling resources run to naught. And the film sets its store out early, being spritely cute and crisp, with no flab on display.
In exploring their confines it becomes apparent that the wall is attractively magnetic, although, also, by turn, explosively repellent too. As they discover in an ouchy manner. They also discover that their neighbours have woken up to the same dilemma, and are perhaps not coping as well as they are. So. Being the kind thoughtful folks that they are, Tim and Olivia decide to drill through their adjoining wall to say ‘hi’, and in turn meet Ana (Williams) and Marvin (Lau) – who is not an android but, seemingly, is paranoid. Or just climbing down some walls after being a huge bender.
After getting off on entirely the wrong foot, our intrepid foursome decide, quite reasonably, that if moving laterally isn’t possible to instead head down. Through the floor. Their goal now to get from the third floor down into the basement, to use a pre-war tunnel through which to escape. Simple right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong!?
And so, down they go, arriving in Friedman’s apartment. Friedman (Alexander Beyer) is the building’s owner and renovator, and an air b-n-b super-host. He is also a fantastic voyeur who has wired almost all apartments with CCTV plumbed into any and all spaces. Oh. One more detail. He’s found slumped, arm-less and so harmless. And dead.
At which point I’m hooked, for this is slickly entertaining, smooth and easily consumed compelling entertainment. So, read no further, simply add this one to your list and get back to the day-job and/or the ironing. And I apologise if ironing is your day-job. Sorry. I wasn’t throwing shade.
What? You want more!? Sheesh. You mither-on just like Jim! Okay okay. More it is then. In their trawling through Mr F’s stuff and his ‘secret place’, it seems that he may have been on to something, regarding the wall. However. Tempus fugit and it’s time for another floor to be holed. At this point my notes read: “It’s oddly like The Poseidon Adventure. In tone. In claustrophobic intensity, as bit-by-bit (sorry) the digital aspect of the wall becomes clearer.” And one floor down we meet grandpa Oswalt (Axel Werner) and granddaughter Lea (Sira-Anna Faal).
And one more down it’s a warm howdy-doody to Yuri (Murathan Muslu) and Anton (Josef Berousek). Yuri is oddly delighting in this end-of-days, desparate for some new world order, whilst being equally convinced that leaving the building is a very bad idea. Anton is dead. The dull chap!
And finally Esther, it’s one more floor down and it’s welcome to the basement, the escape-door, and, hurrah… erm… …oh… yet more wall. Bugger! And then things get a little stressed and go a bit ‘Pete Tong’. In a minor teaser/summary, it turns out that Anton had opened the wall. Yuri wasn’t pleased, but by using Mr F’s wall of videos our survivors can start to piece things together. Then things get bad. Very bad. And now no-one is happy, except for Marvin, as everyone has become more pissed with Yuri than they were with him. Result!!
“Gun before machete!”
“Shut up Marvin!”
So. This is a German film about the sudden imposition of a wall and the lengths that people will go to to get around or through it. Hmm. And it’s cute, tech savvy, sassy, just don’t expect a ‘Hollywood’ ending. And overall. Yeah. Cute. 8/10. Well worth a watch. B- or C+. Hmmm. Let’s open a nice bottle of Merlot and settle on C+.