Hey, everybody: It’s hurricane season! Are you prepared? If you live along the coast — or, really, anywhere in Florida — there are things you should do long before a tropical storm or hurricane is churning across the Atlantic Ocean or crawling along the Gulf Coast trying to outsmart all those state-of-the-art AI forecast models. According to what’s left of the National Weather Service in post-DOGE America, you should:
• Know whether you live in an evacuation zone
• Put together a basic emergency kit, including flashlights, generators and storm shutters
• Create and review a family emergency plan
• Review your insurance policy
• Learn about NWS forecast products
Or, if you’re among the 47% of households in Florida identified by a 2024 United Way study as being unable to afford basic expenses, you’ll probably wait until the storm is two days out and grab as much bottled water and BOGO soup as you can at your favorite grocery store. If you do maintain a disaster supply kit, how long would it last? Days? Weeks?
Five years?
In “The Last House,” a family of four finds itself inexplicably sealed inside their home with no means of escape. This science fiction survival film is directed by Louis Leterrier and written by Matthew Robinson. Despite its imaginative premise, the film stumbles awkwardly through themes of lockdown trauma, deteriorating mental health, dependence upon technology and pushing the limits of human endurance. None of those ideas are adequately explored, and the mechanism that creates the crisis — which initially seems innovative and interesting — becomes increasingly difficult to believe. The film will be released on Netflix on Aug. 7.
Warning: There are spoilers ahead.
The film opens with Jason (Wagner Moura) fishing from the end of a pier. This is the film’s somewhat indelicate way of letting the viewer know Jason is unemployed. He fails to catch any fish, underscoring the fact that he probably feels powerless. Offshore, a weird-looking storm looms on the horizon. The unnatural CGI elements used to create that tempest guarantee that it is an important plot point.
As the rain begins to fall, Jason returns to his very nice house in a very nice suburban neighborhood with very nice neighbors, most of whom he does not know by name. He greets his wife Ann (Greta Lee) and his children, as well as the elderly family dog, Cassidy. After breakfast, they prepare to leave the house only to find themselves trapped: None of the doors and windows will open. They also quickly discover that their phones and internet no longer work.
And it’s not just Jason’s family: Their neighbors are trapped in their houses, too. They manage to communicate with other families in nearby homes using whiteboards and chalkboards.
Because the children age throughout the film, they are portrayed by different actors: Ruth is played by Riley Chung, Emma Ho and Arden Cho; and Graham is played by Noah Alexander Sosnowski and Gabriel Chung.
The family deduces that something in the rainwater has created an impenetrable seal around the house. Except, it’s not an air-tight seal, because if it was the movie would only be 20 minutes long. Is it wrong that I wish it was an air-tight seal?
For the first few days, the family thinks whatever is happening will come to a speedy conclusion. The kids put faith in their parents to solve the problem. The parents put faith in the government, or the scientific community, or those ever-benevolent billionaires to organize a rescue mission. As days become weeks, their anxiety increases. Food becomes scarce. Supplies run out. Jason’s family is somewhat better equipped than some of the neighbors. It becomes evident that people trapped in other houses on the street are starting to die.
Three months into the crisis, things are starting to get desperate. Family members are starting to suffer from extreme malnutrition. Necessity — or, starvation, in this case — is the mother of invention. Jason discovers that he can fish for game through the chimney using an array of clever traps he MacGyvers together from spare parts in his garage. Did I mention that Jason is an out-of-work engineer? Handy.
Also, suddenly Ann has a garden in the dining room. So, even though their neighbors are all dead, Jason and his family are doing fine.
Except apparently whoever used the rainwater to trap most of humanity indoors and let them starve to death is still wandering around outside, picking off any survivors. They’re still out there even when the story jumps five years into the future. This leads to a final confrontation that is as unbelievable as it is disappointing. I won’t reveal who orchestrated this weird apocalypse, but I’m going to reconsider giving up the charbroiled octopus at my favorite Greek restaurant in Tarpon Springs.
“The Last House” is a catalogue of missed opportunities. It could have dug deeply into the erosion of the family dynamic during a prolonged crisis. It could have explored ways people can become more self-reliant, so they are prepared for disasters. It could have examined isolation in relation to one’s dignity and confidence. It touches briefly on each of these without fully developing the themes.
Leterrier nails the claustrophobia, but he may have overemphasized it in the end. The viewer feels trapped in a repetitive cycle of monotonous stress and underdeveloped characters.
I can’t fault the cast: There is some fine work here. Moura and Lee are both equally convincing as parents desperate to keep their family intact in an increasingly horrific situation. There’s only so much they can do with a story that lacks focus and believability.
Lee Clark Zumpe is entertainment editor at Tampa Bay Newspapers, a Tomatometer-Approved Critic, and an author of short fiction. He can be reached by email at lzumpe@TBNweekly.com.