This is The Last House, the Netflix thriller that seals a family inside
Wagner Moura and Greta Lee play the parents of a Seattle family who, mid-storm, find every door and window sealed shut. Louis Leterrier directs, it landed on Friday, and the reviews split down the middle.
The premise fits in one line, and it is the kind that gets you to press play: a family is shut inside their own house and nobody explains why. It is called The Last House, it arrived on Netflix on Friday, and it is the closest thing to a chamber science fiction picture the service has put out this year.
The Delgados are four. Jason, the father, is an out-of-work engineer carrying the guilt of the family’s money troubles. That is Wagner Moura, in the register where he tends to be best: contained, with everything boiling underneath. Ann, the mother, is the family’s supply of optimism, played by Greta Lee, who a lot of people first noticed in Past Lives. Then there is Graham, twelve, and Ruth, eight, siblings who bicker the way siblings do.
What happens, without spoiling it
An unexpected rainstorm settles over their Seattle neighbourhood. When they try to leave, every door and window is sealed. Not stuck, not locked. Sealed, with no explanation offered. From there the film runs on two tracks at once: supplies running down inside, and a threat outside that nobody can see.
Louis Leterrier directs, the same Leterrier as Now You See Me and the Lupin series, trading choreography here for confined space and patience.
Is it worth it?
That depends on your tolerance for films that promise more than they explain. Critics split cleanly. Some praised Leterrier’s control and the two lead performances, reading it as psychological chamber drama rather than science fiction. Others found it an exercise that falls apart the moment it starts answering questions. The workable consensus is that it plays best while the threat stays unknown.
If you are budgeting your month, it lands in a busy August on the platform, which already has the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude and the last of Outer Banks and gets the three-part José Mourinho documentary on the 11th.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Netflix
