The Last House Review: Zero Stars

Zero stars. Negative stars. The kind of rating that requires inventing a new number system because the existing one isn’t cruel enough.

Photo Credit: rockdmagazine.com

Netflix’s “The Last House” is what happens when someone watched “A Quiet Place”, got halfway through a COVID lockdown memoir, and then decided the real villain should be “everything that once had a pulse.” A family gets mysteriously sealed inside their suburban home while the world outside turns into a soggy, tentacled mystery. Sounds tense. In practice, it is 112 minutes of watching people slowly turn their house into a combination indoor farm, rodent abattoir, and emotional pressure cooker.

Uncomfortable doesn’t cover it. I was squirming so hard my couch developed sympathy pains. This film treats animals with all the warmth of a tax auditor—obstacles, resources, or punchlines, take your pick. There’s a conveyor belt of traps, mercy killings, and “Guess what’s for dinner?” moments that would make Bear Grylls lose his appetite. By halfway through, I was essentially a hostage, negotiating with my own remote: “Release the kraken, and let’s call it a day.”

Greta Lee and Wagner Moura try valiantly to sell parental desperation and dwindling hope. The kids are fine. The house itself is a character, slowly rotting and listing like a boat taking on water. None of it matters when the dominant sensory experience is “I wish I had not eaten before this.” The movie wants to be a profound meditation on survival, family, and humanity’s place in the food chain. What it delivers is a masterclass in how to make viewers regret every life choice that led them to hit play.

I strongly do not recommend this film. If the streaming gods offered a “permanently delete from the algorithm so no one else suffers” button, I would press it until my thumb cramped. Watch literally anything else. Go outside. Stare at a wall. Reorganize your spice rack. All of those options score higher than this.

Zero stars. And I’m being generous.