The Last House (2026 film): They kind of bumbled this one

I thought the concept interesting of some supernatural force that locks everyone inside of their own houses and they have to come to terms with how capable they are of surviving without ever going outside.

You simply cannot get out. You can't open doors or windows and you cant smash your way out either. If you try there is some sort of "magic" something or other that immediately repairs any attempted damage and there is some sort of force field of sorts that prevents even breaking of glass. It's not important to understand the physics about this because it is meant to be beyond our understanding like a lot of science fiction is.

There will be spoilers ahead bc I think you should skip this one anyway

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That being said the movie was pretty weak and there were a lot of cringe moments in the film where the characters make the worst possible stupid decisions, and the script is pretty awful in places.

I can't really fully blame them for this because the movie has to be 90 minutes long as is the film standard and how can you really fill up all that time when we are solely focused on just 4 people that all live in the same house all the time.

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The child actors are even pretty bearable which is something I can't normally say - for the most part I abhor child actors simply because almost all of them are clearly out of their element - but in this one even rather strong performances from the lead adult actors can't fix up this kind of weak script or screenplay (whoever is responsible for the dialogue.)

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One thing that irked me right from the start was the inclusion of previously-unknown-to-me actor Wagner Mora. This film takes place in the United States as dystopian stories tend to, yet our leading man is someone who speaks as though he only recently graduated from ESL classes. He can be downright difficult to understand at times and it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense that his diverse family all have perfect accents other than him. It's annoying.

Someone called him "Temu Pablo Pascal" and that made me laugh because it is true.

This would have been a solid 40-minute episode of Black Mirror but as a full-length feature film there are a ton of inconsistencies and what I refer to as "filler."

This one family survives for years because of the ingenuity of the father just happens to have a garage filled with industrial grade tools and knows how to make almost anything with them, apparently. This is necessary for the story but about the 10th time he breaks out the welder, especially after the power goes off I'm sitting over here like "so you have access to high voltage, acetylene, and compressed O2 even though you can't open your friggin door?

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_{one of the only redeeming qualities of this film is this good boy}

The fact that the invisible barrier around the house doesn't apply to the chimney or later, some tunnel that is discovered that conveniently leads to the neighbors basements (huh?) are not subjected to the force field either. It's just dumb. The film established the rules and like so many other poorly written films, it breaks its own rules.

The start of the film, which would have fit nicely into a 40 minute Black Mirror is pretty nicely done, but once we transition from suspense to very dull survival montages, things become a drag.

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The family consistently makes awful decisions that would never happen in real life and this is particularly true with the daughter, whose sole purpose in this film appears to be to screw everything up.

After 90 minutes of mostly tedium the film tries to wrap things up at a lightning pace while again, breaking a ton of rules that the film itself established. Then, when we do have a showdown with the powers that have made this happen in the first place we get treated to a "twist" so stupid that I was angry at myself for keeping it on for the full length of the film.

This is like a M. Night Shyamalan film gone wrong. It's clearly trying to be like that but just fails on so many levels.

Should I watch it?

Don't let that nicely made trailer fool you, this film is a waste of your time and for once I agree with the review sites where they give this 2-4 points out of 10.

The cliche of "Netflix Slop" continues I'm afraid. This one unfortunately doesn't have enough redeeming qualities to be worth watching. I took a chance on it so that you didn't have to. You're welcome.

_{The only way to legally stream this film is through a Netflix subscription}