A relentless storm may seem like a treat for those of us going through a heatwave-heavy summer but this new Netflix thriller turns bad weather into a fight for survival.
The Last House stars Greta Lee and Wagner Moura as a married couple with two children, hurrying home as heavy rains descend on their seaside town. Other than a few wet clothes, they think nothing of it until they go to leave and find themselves sealed inside their house. Turns out everyone else on their street is in the same predicament and with no internet or phone signal available, they do their best to occupy themselves until the problem is resolved. Things become more desperate when the force holding them hostage turns out to be malevolent.
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The film initially asks the audience to imagine what they would do if they found themselves trapped inside their house with no idea of when they would be able to leave. It’s an odd question to pose in a post-COVID world but director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Fast X) builds a more extreme scenario as the mystery around just what is keeping them there grows.
Sadly, aside from prodding residual lockdown trauma, the story runs out of ideas very quickly. After nine minutes of set-up, the majority of the film is a grim family melodrama as we watch our four underwritten heroes deal with a lack of food and character development. There’s no sense of any personal journeying here, with everyone simply reacting to the things happening to them before moving onto the next horror. Vast portions of the movie feel like you’re locked inside with them, enduring numerous montages with no social commentary to give any depth to the overall concept.
Eventually, the reason why they are being kept inside is revealed – although by that point any tension has slowed to a nagging irritability. Films with limited settings tend to rely on a strong script or a complex mystery but neither emerge in a movie that feels like something M. Night Shyamalan might have sketched out and discarded. Some well-choreographed action is brought in at the end, with all the cast throwing themselves into the set pieces, but it is scant reward for the patience required.
Both stars come to this movie with strong reputations as actors who can pour emotion into the right roles – Lee has been stunning in films such as 2023’s Past Lives, while Moura received an Oscar nomination for February’s gripping political thriller The Secret Agent. A better script would have let them showcase their characters’ interior emotions or the psychological scarring from isolation but as it is, this talented duo is left flailing against the current, grappling with ill-defined roles that simply require them to survive the conditions they find themselves in.
A poorly conceived mystery with a payoff that isn’t worth the wait, The Last House may provide some thrills for survival horror enthusiasts but it’s ultimately more sombre than scary.
Details
Director: Louis Leterrier
Starring: Greta Lee, Wagner Moura
Release date: Out now (on Netflix)
The post ‘The Last House’ review: lockdown horror as thrilling as making sourdough appeared first on NME.
