Director: Louis Leterrier
Writer: Matthew Robinson
Stars: Wagner Moura, Greta Lee
Synopsis: A family of four is suddenly sealed inside their house with no way out and must work together to survive against both their dwindling resources and the mysterious, looming threat that is keeping them trapped.
Netflix’s latest streaming film, The Last House, is the brainchild of someone who seemingly thought, “Let’s combine Stephen King’s Under the Dome with Swiss Family Robinson and add a monster that looks like the spawn of one of James Cameron’s Aliens.” On paper, that may sound like a bona fide hit. The execution, however, is something else entirely.
That does not make The Last House bad, far from it. However, its lack of originality, an increasingly familiar Netflix trademark in genre films, makes it feel like a collection of recycled parts that never fully come together. By the end, a handful of cheap red herrings severely undercut the experience, allowing the film’s above-average tension to wash away.
And far too easily, as everyone we care about escapes unscathed and without consequence, making the stakes of The Last House minimal at best. This is the type of pandemic streaming cinematic experience that cinephiles with a critical eye might have given a pass, knowing the restrictions involved.
Which begs the question: Why limit yourself to a bottleneck film with a significant special-effects budget, only to deliver such a toothless experience?
The story follows the Delgado family. When we meet Jason (Civil War’s Wagner Moura), the son of a fisherman, he is trying to catch dinner for his family from the pier. He manages to catch only a fingerling, barely old enough to survive on its own. Jason throws it back, noting that it is the first thing he has caught in days. The man looks worn down by the responsibilities of life.
Jason is married to Riley (Greta Lee of Past Lives fame), and they have two children: their teenage son, Graham (May December’s Gabriel Barbosa), and their precocious young daughter, Ruth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’s Riley Chung). Jason and Riley are struggling to make ends meet, while their home is also in desperate need of repairs.
However, later that night, in the middle of a frightening rainstorm, the Delgado family discovers that they are unable to escape their home. The doors will not open, the windows appear to have been painted shut, and even when Jason tries to smash one with a crowbar, the rain magically repairs the cracks almost immediately. The Delgaldos are sealed inside their home, with no escape.
The Last House is a science-fiction thriller from Louis Leterrier (Fast X), whose career can be summed up as rarely making you feel like you are watching great cinema, even as you recognize the craft involved. For instance, not showing the monsters for the first two acts is a smart choice, with the first thirty minutes or so that can be arresting, at the very least, intriguing.
The first act’s simplicity from Matthew Robinson’s (Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die) script works in the experience’s favor. While that works, the film begins and ends by being heavy-handed, cloaking itself with a pre-pandemic-era environmental subtext. Then, in the middle are too many musical tonal breathers, where the family works together.
This is an exercise in trying to add family-film levity, a mix of genres that doesn’t quite work. However, what the film really needed was an honest look at marriage and family dynamics, where moments of crisis reveal who we really are. The type of contained crisis that uses marriage, self-preservation, and fear as a dramatic engine to drive the story.
There is one moment like this, but it is quickly abandoned, just as you can feel Lee and Moura about to sink their teeth into something heightened but real, considering the circumstances. Instead, we get jokes about vinyl records and endlessly quoting Harrison Ford in Air Force One, which just made me want to search for Wolfgang Peterson’s action spectacular in my queue.
Yes, Moura and Lee are quite good here, but since this is a tale of survival, the film doesn’t have the guts to make a bold move, rarely creating enough tension or suspense to make us question the characters’ fates. The result is a thriller that has the makings of above-average entertainment, but by playing the game too safe, you cannot help but wish the filmmakers had aspired to more than box themselves in.
You can stream The Last House exclusively on Netflix starting August 7th!
