Jason Delgado (Moura), an unemployed engineer, lives in suburban Seattle with his wife Ann (Lee), their young children Ruth and Graham and their family Golden Retriever, Cassidy. One afternoon, an unprecedented storm rolls in. Suddenly, an inexplicable force seals the family inside their home. Doors and windows cannot be opened and an impenetrable barrier composed of controlled rainwater prevents any escape through walls, floors or the foundation.
Neighbours across the street face the exact same fate, while people caught outdoors are picked off by unseen forces. The lockdown stretches from days into months into years, forcing them to adapt to survive inside the house. Ann establishes an indoor garden using soil from potted plants and rainwater harvesting systems, while Jason invents 'chimney fishing' - using the fireplace chimney to trap birds and small animals in the garden with various contraptions he invents, then dragging them up and into the house! Desperation turns grim when food runs out and the ageing dog, already on heart medication to keep him alive, meets his end. Jason, the pragmatist, knows what to do with the remains - the others don't want to know!
We stay with the family through the weeks and months as they learn to adapt and how to behave when the creature (or creatures) outside make an appearance. Eventually, the film leaps five years forward, with the kids grown into teenagers. The tentacled creatures are still around, but the family has gained plenty of experience by now in how to keep them at bay and survive.
Ruth somehow works out that the creatures aren't aliens, but rather some kind of ancient, mythical deep-sea creatures reclaiming the earth's surface after centuries of human ocean pollution and climate destruction. Here lies the first message for humanity! The creatures become nature's response to climate change. Earth isn't being 'invaded' but rather its original inhabitants are taking back what humanity polluted - showing that humanity can't defeat nature through misusing resources. Survival requires empathy, restraint and accepting our shared place in the ecosystem. And so on!
Lastly, the film functions as a snapshot and reflection of what happened at the turn of the decade regarding COVID - when everyone was locked down and had to live with codependency, paranoia, resource hoarding and domestic claustrophobia.
I was interested to learn that the film was shot primarily at Shepperton Studios here in Blighty under the original title 11817, before Netflix acquired it and changed the title to The Last House. Kingsley Ben-Adir was originally in talks to star alongside Greta Lee before scheduling issues led to Wagner Moura taking the male lead as Jason. Ruth was portrayed by three different actors across the film's time jumps - Riley Chung (8-year-old), Emma Ho (13-year-old) and Arden Cho providing the voiceover for adult Ruth.
For most of the film, Ruth was played in her 8-year-old stage, and Riley Chung, alongside the other three, did a fine job in her role. It all got a bit 'Disney'-like towards the end, to be honest - and the whole concept and premise, of course, was pretty daft to begin with, but they did a good job of making it feel real enough. The director also did a fine job keeping it together and there was some good cinematography making the most of the claustrophobic set (almost all of the film was inside the house) alongside some underwater sequences as things went pear-shaped!
It's worth a watch - a decent-enough little adventure - and for those who want some takeaway messages, they can have them! I quite enjoyed it. The pacing was good - slowing down when it needed to, then flying off at times too - and the near-two-hour runtime flew past nicely.
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