If A Quiet Place and Covid had a baby it’d look like The Last House (now on Netflix), a high-concept horror-thriller about a family locked in their home by a mysterious force. It boasts some noteworthy talent: In front of the camera, we’ve got shoulda-been Oscar winner Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) and shoulda-been Oscar nominee Greta Lee (Past Lives), and behind the camera is Louis Leterrier, director of Hollywood mega-movies like Fast X, The Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans. High hopes? Yeah, kinda! But the result is… well, are there awards for miscasting and lousy screenwriting?  

The Gist: Our overly layered and cluttered intro finds Jason (Moura) fishing off the pier, throwing back his catch for being too small, then beating a fairly hasty retreat from an incoming very cheap-looking CGI storm. Then, a girl narrates diary-style about “the day the rain came,” which coincides with when “we learned we’re not alone.” Curious. Jason drives his ol’ Jeep back to his ol’ house with the ol’ dog and a stack of ol’ bills with BOLD RED LETTERING ON THE ENVELOPES proclaiming they’re past due. But he has a relatively young family there, in his wife Ann (Lee), son Graham (Noah Alexander Sosnowski) and daughter Ruth (Riley Chung). The house is cluttery and lived-in and everyone seems fairly happy despite Jason being between jobs, and the big crack in the chimney signifying a sinking foundation that’ll cost way more than they can afford to repair. 

The rainstorm hits. No biggie. It’s just rain. Then the internet goes out, a minor catastrophe for children and their iPads. Christmas is a couple of weeks away, so the plan is to go pick out a tree — but the doors won’t open. Neither will the windows. No amount of pushing, shouldering, or drilling through the lock or frame will get them to budge. Is it raining Gorilla Glue or something? Eventually, a bit farther down the run time, Jason will look into one of the holes he drilled and see the glue-rain moving purposefully like the gloop that made up the T-1000 model Terminator, and he acknowledges it for just a moment before moving on with his day, like it’s just an odd thing to shrug off. Strange. But don’t worry, the movie lost me long before that happened.

I’m getting ahead of myself. They’re stuck in the house with no internet or cell service, and some chalkboard communiques with the neighbors tell them that everyone’s in the same predickyment here. This is when Jason shows his secret pistol to Ann. She didn’t know about it. If you must know, the make and model of the gun is the Chekhov .003rd Act Plot Device, available in case they need to shoot something, not that I’m spoiling anything. Anyway, they hunker down, and by DAY 2 Jason’s getting out the ol’ DVD player but they only have two discs — the 1982 Annie and Air Force One — and one ol’ red Netflix envelope that he very conspicuously acknowledges then crumples into a ball and throws away. Yes, this is where the GD movie started to lose me. I mean, it takes until DAY 4 for anyone to acknowledge that the dog has been shitting on the floor this whole time. What a dumbass screenplay. 

So as the days and weeks pass, the fam starts rationing their food. They’ve got about two months’ worth, which should be plenty to keep them alive until the glue-rain stops — if it ever stops — right? Sure. But to be safe, Ann grows a little vegetable garden on the kitchen counter. The kids study like they’re in school, using whatever books are in the house. The neighbors aren’t faring so well, but whaddayagonnado? They concoct a Christmas tree out of some old stuff and string lights on it, drop some records on the turntable for a dance party, and little Ruth starts seeing monsters outside but they’re blurry from the rain and bad lighting, so what is she seeing, exactly? Not that anybody believes she’s seeing actual monsters, of course. That’s just ridiculous. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Well, the concept is remarkably similar to A Quiet Place (or maybe 10 Cloverfield Lane), and the quirky lived-in house and precocious children bring to mind The Book of Henry — and while The Last House isn’t that bad, the least flattering comparison one can make to any movie is The Book of Henry. 

Performance Worth Watching: Man, I hope Moura and Lee were paid well for this movie, because it frequently makes them look silly. Just rewatch The Secret Agent and Past Lives, for sanity’s sake. 

Sex And Skin: None.

Our Take: Subtitle: 5 YEARS LATER. That’s not a spoiler — it’s in the trailer. And by then, the kids have been replaced by older actors (Emma Ho and Gabriel Barbosa), everyone has learned to hide from the whatevers lurking outside and the house is leaning over and covered with moss and lichen and filled with cornstalks and other foodbearing plants, a gratingly obvious capital-S Symbol of the psychological state of the people living inside. A psychological state that’s a red herring for a story that’s far more concerned with reaching the conclusion by any means possible, nonsensical or otherwise, rather than making sense of anything or detailing what’s going on, and why, and how. It’s a frustrating mess.

Not that we need a third act loaded down with explanations, but the components of the plot are seemingly thrown together with little concern for, say, what the deal is with the gluey rain. It’s just a thing the screenwriter, Matthew Robinson, concocts with minimal regard for logic. The film is so slipshod and random, that attempting to draw upon any of the film’s implications so one can theorize what it is and how it works feels like madness. Perhaps it’s meant to be mysterious, but it’s not particularly compelling, and is too reminiscent of other high-concept sci-fi-ish thrillers that more effectively draw out and sustain dramatic tension and suspense. 

Even more problematic is the tone, which veers wildly from Amblinesque uptempo family dramedy to hopeless grimness, and inspires hysterical performances from Lee and Moura. They shriek and yell and hyperventilate — perhaps to compensate for their poorly developed characters — until you feel embarrassed for them. It’s all gratingly uber-dramatic and the movie never truly earns its emotional bona-fides. The Last House is a classic case of “Who Writes This Shit?”, leaving us shaking our heads at its unapologetically half-assed display of grating nonsense.  

Our Call: The Last House? More like The Last Movie You Should Watch This Weekend. SKIP IT.

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