Plot: A family that suddenly finds themselves trapped inside their own home with no way out, forced to survive as their supplies dwindle and a mysterious unseen threat closes in around them.
Review: I have to give credit to The Last House for trying something a little different from what we have seen in past apocalyptic monster movies. John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place used sound-sensitive alien creatures to deliver a creepy and original take on a family banding together to survive in a desolate future. Netflix, which has deep pockets, has made its attempt at a similar concept with Louis Leterrier’s The Last House. Starring Wagner Moura and Greta Lee as parents surviving with their kids during an unexplained phenomenon that traps them in their home, The Last House feels like two different movies from distinct genres that are smashed together, resulting in an uneven viewing experience. Boasting some solid moments and special effects, The Last House takes some interesting routes on a journey that does not quite live up to the promises made by the trailer. With a second-half shift that feels straight out of the M. Night Shyamalan playbook, The Last House is bound to be a big hit when it debuts on Netflix despite not being as good as it could have been.
The Last House takes place in the suburbs of Seattle during a tumultuous period of torrential rain, unusually extreme even for the Pacific Northwest. Avid fisherman and mechanic Jason (Wagner Moura) lives with his family in a house with structural damage and mounting bills as he remains unemployed. His wife, Ann (Greta Lee), is supportive as they raise their twelve-year-old son, Graham, and eight-year-old daughter, Ruth. As they plan to go get a Christmas tree, the family finds that the doors and windows are all sealed, as are all their neighbors’ homes. With no internet or phone, Jason and Ann go into survival mode when the mystery extends into the next day. As the trailer shows, the days the family remains trapped become weeks, and weeks become years. The film evolves from a survival mystery into something more psychological as the pressure and isolation begin to take their toll. Just how time affects the various members of the family becomes key to the second half of The Last House and also serves as the movie’s biggest flaw.
At first, The Last House suffers from clunky dialogue and wooden performances from Moura and Lee, both of whom have been critically lauded for their performances over the last few years. The entire opening act of The Last House feels like it cannot figure out the tone or pacing it wants to maintain for the rest of the film. Often this can be due to reshoots to add new scenes added after the film was shot or just an example of poor screenwriting, but it comes and goes throughout the film. We get teases of something using water against humanity and threats outside of the house, but not much beyond shadows, and some jump scares. Once the film finds its footing and shows us the diminishing supplies the family has and the limited ways they have to keep themselves occupied, the story jumps ahead by over a thousand days. As teased in the trailer, The Last House becomes a science-fiction twist on Cast Away, as Jason and Ann use the weak infrastructure of their home to their advantage while their neighbors are not as lucky. With time serving as the cruelest antagonist, the family begins to fracture before they decide to use their individual strengths to try and find a way out of their prison.
For the last forty-five minutes of its running time, The Last House turns into something very different than where it starts. In the final act, both Wagner Moura and Greta Lee feel more comfortable in their roles, even though the characters make some incredulously short-sighted decisions. The film careens towards a final twist meant to carry a deeper message, but it feels rushed and a bit anticlimactic after what we see the characters endure. Once you get to the end of the film, hints throughout the opening of the movie come full circle and make it evident that someone thought the high concept for this movie was a brilliant variation on what audiences expect rather than the most heavy-handed plot twist since M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. It also comes after a solid closing action sequence that utilizes some pretty innovative special effects and solid direction to almost redeem the silliness that pervades the rest of the movie. I will credit the child actors Riley Chung and Emma Ho, who play the younger and older Ruth, as well as Noah Alexander Sosnowski and Gabriel Barbosa, who portray Graham; both pairs do good work and are more consistent than their adult counterparts.
The uneven writing of The Last House comes courtesy of screenwriter Matthew Robinson, who wrote this year’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which played with the rules of time travel storytelling to great effect. Robinson is also responsible for the bizarre 2016 family movie Monster Trucks, the decent Dora and the Lost City of Gold, and the underrated Love and Monsters. The Last House is directed by Louis Leterrier, who has been far better with larger action projects like Fast X, Clash of the Titans, and The Incredible Hulk than with character-driven work. Leterrier struggles to capture the quieter elements of distress and anxiety in Robinson’s screenplay, which lets the wooden dialogue overtake scenes in the first half. When The Last House becomes more reliant on action, Leterrier’s talents as a filmmaker come through, resulting in the better sections of the film. The Last House swings wildly between set-piece-heavy filmmaking and smaller-scale sequences, but struggles to reconcile them in the same movie, leaving some sections feeling overlong and others far too short.
I would have been far more disappointed after watching The Last House if I had seen it theatrically, but this is a perfect example of the type of movie that works better on Netflix than on the big screen. If you watch it at home, you can skip through the slow parts, tune out and do something else, and then pay attention when things start to build in terms of action or intensity. Both Wagner Moura and Greta Lee show both the worst and the best of their acting, sometimes in the same scene. I started out hating this movie, but came around to the concept as it built the limited world of the family’s imprisonment in their own home before turning into something bigger. It does not go where I had hoped it would, and it ends up hitting the familiar notes of the post-apocalyptic genre without really giving us much of an explanation for how or why things happen. The Last House will surely find an audience looking for a decent streaming alternative, but it does not earn the twist that it thinks is more creative than it actually is.
The Last House premieres on August 7th on Netflix.