New Netflix hit movie The Last House features a whole raft of conceptual familiarities: A family in peril, trapped in a single location as an unexplained, apparently monster-derived apocalypse occurs outside the walls of their home. They’re forced to forge survival skills. They cling to a few fraying vestiges of their former existence (e.g., a DVD copy of Air Force One). As time passes, some of them lose their grip on sanity. And they eventually experience close encounters with enigmatic creatures who apparently want to kill them for unexplained reasons.

Cynics among us might say Netflix cobbled the movie — directed by Louis Leterrier and starring Greta Lee and Wagner Moura — out of pieces plucked from other films, at the whims of the almighty algorithm, but we’re not here to chuck rocks at it (we already did that). No, we’re here to be your guides through this hyper-specific genre and list some movies that The Last House resembles in one way or another.

So if you liked it, here are its potentially enjoyable influences. And if you didn’t, some of these might be more thrilling, funny, scary or generally satisfying. But I will say, many of them are just as silly. 

1. This John Krasinski-starring-and-directed thriller (and its sequel and prequel and also probably the upcoming second sequel) is the biggest influence on The Last House: A family, led by Krasinski and Emily Blunt, guts out an out-of-nowhere apocalyptic invasion by aliens that can’t see diddly-squat but can hear a flea blink from a thousand paces. They hole up in makeshift homes, scavenging food and medicine and doing everything they can to avoid being killed, which involves a whole lotta shushing and telling others to shush lest everyone have their pancreases eviscerated by gangly CGI monsters. Notably, the sequence in which Blunt gives birth – without anything resembling an epidural, or even a single Tylenol – while trying to be silent is one of the most tense and effective horror moments in recent memory.

   Where to watch A QUIET Place

2. Or Bird Brain, if you’re feeling dismissive like I am. But this was another big hit for Netflix, in which Sandra Bullock does her damnedest not to even look at the alien presence lest she immediately go crazy and kill herself. It’s an affliction everyone in the world has to deal with, of course, so people hidey-hole up in hideyholes and cover the windows lest they see the (vaguely invisible, shadow-casting, wholly conceptually ridiculous) entity o’ death. The premise swallows this movie alive, poor Bullock included, but that didn’t stop a zillion people from watching it. 

   Watch Bird Box on Netflix

4. Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Mahershala Ali find themselves holed up in an AirBnB as “Something Apocalyptic” happens to the entire world around them. They bicker and quibble cynically and aren’t sure if they can trust each other, etc., and a girl shows an obsession with Friends that loosely parallels the Air Force One bit in The Last House. This is a more serious movie than others on this list — the horrors are human, not alien — but no less ridiculous thanks to the bucketsful of red herrings it throws at us. Maybe it’s a masterpiece if you’re a shark.

   Watch LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND on netflix

5. Mary Elizabeth Winstead wrecks her car and wakes up in John Goodman’s survivalist bunker. He says she can’t leave because the air outside is poisoned and “something something” aliens “something something.” Should she believe this guy, or is he a creep? What’s really going on out in the world? That core tension means this is the rare flick on this list that’s more about character and performance, and isn’t always kowtowing to the fascist forces of a High Concept Premise.

   Where to watch 10 cloverfield lane

6. A high-ranking candidate for “Most Depressing Movie of All Time,” this Stephen King adaptation finds Thomas Jane and a group of his fellow townsfolk trapped in a supermarket as a mysterious fog full of god-knows-what — flying beasties, tentacles attached to bodies we can’t see, etc. — attacks anyone who walks outside. Meanwhile, Marcia Gay Harden gets all psychotically religious about the goings-on. This is one of the good ones, thanks to its high-tension execution and an ending that’s not only memorable, but leaves you standing there looking at your intestines lying on the floor.

   Where to watch The mist

7. A number of M. Night Shyamalan joints could qualify here, including Knock at the Cabin (a couple on a wooded vacay aren’t sure if they should believe the strangers telling them the world is ending) and The Happening (an invisible force incites mass suicide, and eventually, Mark Wahlberg participates in one of the stupidest scenes in cinema history when he successfully runs away from the wind). But this one, from a halcyon time before we knew Mel Gibson was a shitheel, finds the now-disgraced star leading a frightened family as the world speculates whether an outbreak of crop circles signifies an alien invasion. Viewers will either be swept up in Shyamalan’s dramatic manipulations or, if they’re not so emotionally involved, pointing out plot holes. I was too terrified by whatever was behind that wooden door to care about narrative inconsistencies, so I place this among the director’s best work.

   Where to watch signs

8. The cause of the end of the world this time isn’t a mystery — it’s angry hungry flying dinosaurs. A lot of them. It kinda has to be a lot of them, doesn’t it? But before you breathe a sigh of relief at the refreshingly simple premise, keep in mind, the characters must be as quiet as a feather brushing against velveteen lest the creatures attack. Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci are among a bunch of people bunkering up to avoid being chomped, and this is as good a place as any to bring up a common story beat among these movies: someone gets hurt or sick and needs antibiotics, which are understandably in short supply during the apocalypse, but also inevitably in a location requiring a harrowing journey through the heart of the life-threatening premise. The dinos wouldn’t have to work so hard if they just hid within swooping distance of the local pharmacy.

   Where to watch the silence (2019)

9. All Those Covid Movies!!!

   We haven’t even mentioned the obvious real-life reference inspiring the premise of The Last House — how masonry contractors charge so dang much for chimney repair. No! Actually, it’s Covid lockdown, and the family in the film spends five years in their pajamas, going stir crazy and learning to bake bread or whatever. So inevitably we must invoke In the Earth and Locked Down and How it Ends and Songbird and all those movies that age poorly not just because they’re about a specific moment in time, but because nobody in their right mind wants to relive that specific moment in time, ever.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.