There are small writing flaws that detract from the building sense of dread, like a voiceover heavy on the cheese (“I remember when the rains came…”) when it intrudes on the events. There’s also a fair amount of showing and telling when something happens, as if anticipating that not everyone is going to pay full attention to the screen. When Graham dips into the family’s dwindling water supply to care for his sister, he tells his dad (who is watching over his ailing daughter), “This is the last of our water, she needs it.” A few times, characters do stupefyingly silly things that endanger themselves and their loved ones. Characters stand still after being told to run, as they watch one of the last remaining people outside snatched up by an unseen entity. When Jason and his son tell Ann to get back to safety, she instead wastes time, putting herself squarely within arm’s reach of a monster. It’s the kind of silly horror movie dithering meant to make viewers yell at the TV screen.
Coming mostly from an action movie background that includes the first two Transporters and Now You See MeLeterrier moves The Last House pretty quickly with little sentimentality. The rapid changes in tone sometimes lead to a sense of whiplash, like when a devastating monster attack soon gives way to a retreat before the sunrise, and the false sense of hope that the family could escape. But days turn into weeks into months, and soon, Jason and Ann’s children are becoming adolescents with secrets of their own, developing rebellious streaks that push back against their parents despite the unusual circumstances. The isolated circumstances do at first resemble the scary first few days of COVID lockdown, when everyone was sequestered in their homes, theorizing about where this came from and what will happen next. Like those early months of restrictions, nature also came back, claiming spaces that once were occupied by too many humans, a concept that’s expanded even further in the movie as those first few months turn into years of waiting for the front door to open once again.
For her role in The Last House, Lee proves she may have the makings of a scream queen in her. As the family matriarch, she swings from the highs—trying to keep everyone’s spirits up with modestly made cookies after the sugar’s run out; ripping up the floorboards to start a greenhouse to grow their own food—to the lows of crashing out, losing hope of ever making it out alive, and screaming her head off once the Cthulhu-octopus monster reveals itself. Moura’s patriarch, Jason, is more of a stoic MacGyver-type with a fondness for creating clever inventions around the home and who’s determined to use logic to get them out of most messes, even as the new world around them defies that logic. Moura doesn’t match the intensity of Lee, and they make something of a mismatched team against some truly goofy monsters.
While there are some enjoyable scares and impressive set pieces built inside an old home, The Last House struggles to keep up the mystery and suspense the longer the family sits in desperation. Even if Lee and Moura work overtime to sell the terrifying scenario these parents find themselves in, ridiculous lines and worse decision-making takes us out of the moment. Most disappointingly, The Last House doesn’t even end neatly by the time the credits roll, leaving the front door wide open for future sequels.
Director: Louis Leterrier
Writers: Matthew Robinson
Starring: Wagner Moura, Greta Lee, Riley Chung, Noah Alexander Sosnowski, Emma Ho, Gabriel Barbosa
Release Date: August 7, 2026 (Netflix)
