The Last House: A Netflix Thriller That Almost Thrills

Unless it receives a significant theatrical release or an Academy Awards campaign, one should not expect a Netflix original movie to be of particularly high quality. Sure, they might spend enough money on it to make it look better than your average made-for-TV fare, but that’s usually the only thing that makes them stand out. Sadly, that once again proved to be the case with their latest high-concept monster thriller The Last House, which has its share of thrills, but ultimately doesn’t amount to much above a more-polished SyFy Channel release.

One rainy afternoon, Jason (Wagner Moura) and Ann (Greta Lee) find a mysterious force has somehow trapped them and their 2 children, Ruth (Riley Chung) and Grahan (Noah Alexander Sosnowski), in their home. After becoming panicked and launching into increasingly frenzied means of escape, they notice that the same predicament has befallen all their neighbors and so they calm down and wait for help. Days pass and it becomes clear help isn’t coming, with the problem seemingly spreading much further than their neighborhood, and so they set about finding ways to both keep themselves alive and sane, while realizing that the now almost ever-present rain appears to be behind their entrapment and young Ruth claims to be catching glimpses of mysterious beings lurking outside.

5 years pass and their situation has not improved. Their ingenuity has kept them alive far longer than any of their neighbors and the world outside has been reclaimed by nature, but their now-teenaged children (now played by Emma Ho and Gabriel Barbosa) are beginning to chafe against their existence and the familial bonds are cracking like the chimney above their damaged fireplace. When the creatures outside begin to focus more intently on the family, they will need to find a way to heal their relationships if they have any hope of continued survival.

The exact mechanisms or origins of the monsters are never fully explained, which isn’t really a problem as often the mysterious is more frightening than the known, though in this case even a little more information might have been nice given the sheer oddity of what occurs. The cast does a good job with the material, even if none of their characters are really satisfactorily developed despite being the focus of the vast majority of the film, and the circumstances that allow them to do so well in their predicament—and despite many boneheaded moves—are so specific as to be almost laughably implausible.

There are several very tense and thrilling moments and even at least one good jump scare, as director Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me, The Transporter) certainly knows his way around an action sequence, but the movie is at its most interesting when it simply lets the family exist and even sort of thrive, serving as an almost rousing testament to the resiliency of humanity. It’s clear they feel a lot of affection for one another and it’s heartening to see while also further deepening the worry the viewer feels over their fate. The ending is too abrupt, saccharine, and ridiculous, but what comes before is largely entertaining enough to prevent the whole thing from feeling like a waste of time. In the canon of Netflix movies that are designed to be watched while you scroll your phone, this is actually one of the better entries, though I guess that isn’t really saying much. ★★½