In a roundabout, meta sort of way, “The Last House” puts a genuinely terrifying question to its viewers. How long would you last?
How long would you hold out if you tried to leave your home one day but found that all the doors wouldn’t open? That the cracks in any window you tried to break would immediately repair themselves? That there was no Wi-Fi or phone service, so you had trouble determining how widespread the problem was? That all the neighbors you could see from your window were in the same situation and communicating with one another via hand-scrawled messages? Your electricity might go down; your food supplies might run low. It would be like the Covid-19 pandemic without fresh air, connectivity or groceries.
How long would you last? You, who chose to watch “The Last House” and not “The Exterminating Angel,” the Luis Buñuel classic in which societal rules break down when bourgeois dinner guests find that they are unable to withdraw from the salon area — would you be capable of adjusting to survival mode?
That type of self-interrogation is ultimately more interesting than anything in the movie, which focuses on one household’s persistence and ingenuity. The four main characters are aided by a conspicuous lack of friction. To extend the Tolstoy line, all happy families are alike, but the family that’s going to endure until it’s the last house had better be the happiest.
The father, Jason (Wagner Moura), has training as an engineer and is an experienced fisherman; both skills come in handy when it’s time to lure small mammals from outdoors. (Animal lovers should stay far, far away from this movie.) The mother, Ann (Greta Lee), has a green thumb that proves useful even without direct sunlight. The children take their confinement in stride. Ruth (Riley Chung) busies herself with art; Graham (Noah Alexander Sosnowski) learns to play piano. The home has a solid collection of vinyl (Stevie Wonder, David Bowie), but the scant DVD offerings (just “Annie” and “Air Force One”) are their own form of punishment.
What’s sealing everyone in? “The Last House,” written by Matthew Robinson (“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”) and directed by Louis Leterrier (who helped inaugurate the “Transporter” franchise), splits the difference between willful fuzziness and unsatisfying explanations. Obvious issues raised by the premise are barely addressed. (Was almost no one in the neighborhood, or on the planet, outside when the great lockup occurred? We meet only a lone jogger.)
And while, in theory, anything can happen in science fiction, “The Last House” hasn’t made sense of its own physics. At first it appears that an ominous force is controlling the atmosphere, the weather and the almost magnetized beading of water droplets on window panes. You can practically hear the studio executives say, “But we will have big, tentacled monsters, right?” Thematically, the movie likewise can’t commit; it’s half eco-parable, half simple-minded moral lesson. You might outlast “The Last House,” but there are better ways to kill time indoors.
The Last House Rated PG-13 for marijuana use, sexual references and scenes that may traumatize pet owners. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix.