Monolith (4½ Stars)

This is the fourth film in the Stuttgart Nights Festival.

Lily Sullivan has joined a very elite group of actors. She's one of the few actors who's starred in a film alone, without any other actors. The only others I can think of at the moment are Ryan Reynolds in "Buried" and Tom Hardy in "Locke". It takes great acting skill to appear alone in a film. Why have I never heard of Lily Sullivan before? She has a big future ahead of her.

Lily plays an unnamed woman who works as a podcaster. I'll call her Lily for the sake of ease. Her podcast is called "Beyond Belief", and she specialises in accounts of supernatural occurrences that are hard to believe. Whether the stories are true or false is secondary, as long as they're interesting.

Lily receives an anonymous email telling her to ring a woman to ask her about a brick. Yes, a brick. If I'd been the podcaster I would have deleted the email as a joke, but the woman follows it up. She telephones the woman, and she tells her she found the brick as a child, and she had a wonderful feeling when she held it. However, the brick was taken off her, and it was sold to a man for a large price. Lily rings the man, and he confirms that the brick is special. He's collected similar bricks from all over the world.

What's so special about them? We're never told. It remains a mystery. But another woman who's also researched the bricks tells her that everyone who talks about the bricks becomes ill. No, the illness isn't passed by touching or even looking at the bricks, people become ill simply by talking about the bricks, so Lily should stop her podcast reports in order to protect people.

I don't want to give any more away. This is a very strange film, and I realise that my synopsis makes it sound too stupid to take seriously, but I ask my readers to take a risk and watch it, if only for the magnificent acting by Lily Sullivan.