I Wouldn't Recommend "The Last House" if it was The Last Movie on Earth

It’s pretty safe to say that the vast majority of people know what it’s like to be trapped inside their houses. The early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic irrevocably changed society’s relationship with isolation. In many ways, The Last House was created as an outlet for the complicated emotions of that time. Six years later, however, the film about a family locked inside of their own house during a “rain invasion” falls flat, lacking the emotional stakes that would make it relatable. 

At the start of The Last House, Ann (Greta Lee) and her husband Jason (Wagner Moura) are struggling to pay the bills and provide for their family. Their eight-year-old daughter Ruth (Riley Chung) and older son Graham (Noah Alexander Sosnowski) remain blissfully unaware, frolicking through the house and bantering with each other as siblings do. One morning, they wake up to find the front door stuck shut. And the side door. And the windows. There’s no way to even break out—they’re stuck inside, and so is everyone else in the neighborhood. 

Thus begins a years-long struggle to stay alive with the resources available inside of the house. Unlike our own quarantines, The Last House world loses internet connection, leaving them unable to seek companionship or advice from the outside. The exact mechanics of the “rain invasion” are a bit hard to pin down. Director Louis Leterrier relies heavily on voice-over narration to explain away any lingering questions. It’s unclear how they figured out the rain was responsible for their predicament, how their house didn’t immediately flood, or how the rain monsters developed their powers. 

I am comfortable overlooking plot holes in science fiction movies. I am not tuning into Netflix for Game of Thrones-level world building. However, what the film lacks in cohesion needs to be made up for in character development, and the pacing of The Last House made this impossible. The first half of the film takes place while the family is eating their stockpiled food and drinking water with the electricity on. There are no stakes. There’s nothing that can hurt them and they aren’t going to die anytime soon. Because of this, there’s very little time for the moments of upheaval. Problems are quickly resolved, and any mental instability feels unearned.

Lee and Moura do their best, but there isn’t much for them to work with. They stand out when they’re paired together in moments of emotional anguish, where one of them is spiraling and the other is trying to pull them back from the brink. These scenes feel real, but with no build-up or ramp-down, they’re out of place in an otherwise flat film. I wish there had been more emphasis on the effect of living for years in the same house with the same three people. Instead, the film is bogged down with one-off rain monster threats that always come to a quick and undramatic end.

Social and Political Commentary

Spoilers for the ending of The Last House below this point

After years of people being locked inside of their houses, the world starts to thrive again. Plants grow, wild animals roam, and the ocean rises to cover even more of Earth than it already does (which, apparently, has no consequences for the animals it undoubtedly displaced and forced into smaller habitat zones.) The quote “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is quite clearly Ocean” by Arthur C. Clarke is used as an epigraph to kick off the film. 

Leterrier uses Ruth as a conduit to the rain monster’s emotions. She sees them as friends even as they attack her family and cause the death of her neighbors. The young girl being connected to the monsters is a common horror trope, and here it’s used to underpin the film’s entire thesis: Nature is interconnected, and we should all live at peace with each other. 

At the end of the film, a final confrontation with a rain monster comes to an end when Jason offers mercy to the creature caught in his trap. For some reason, this is enough for the rain monsters to end the rain plague and unlock all of the doors to all of the houses around the world. 

It’s clearly meant to be a poetic moment, but as the family climbs on their neighbor’s boat and sets sail to find companionship, I’m left with more questions than answers. How will they eat and drink aboard the boat? If the rain monsters attacked for no reason, why would they leave after one fight? Why did it take so long for the rain monsters to enter Jason and Ann’s house when they’d flooded all of the neighboring houses long ago? 

None of it quite makes sense, and because of that I’m forced to zoom out and only focus on what they’re telling me. The only way to survive in this world is luck, mercy, and kindness. The only way to survive this film is by falling asleep and not waking up until it’s over.