27.5 million people watched The Last House in its first three days. Critics gave it 28% on Rotten Tomatoes. Both of those things are true at the same time, and together they tell you most of what you need to know about what kind of film this is.
The Last House (2026)
The Story: One November morning in Seattle, the Delgado family wakes up to find every door and window sealed shut from outside. Something is in the rain. Nobody comes to help. What follows is five years of survival inside four walls — watching their children grow up, slowly running out of everything, and trying to understand what’s keeping them trapped.
🎬 Our opinion: A solid high-concept thriller that felt, to me, like it came straight out of the 90s — in the best possible way. Not sensational, not without flaws, but a perfectly watchable two hours with a strong first half, some genuinely clever survival mechanics, and an ending that doesn’t quite earn the setup. Critics hated it. Audiences watched it anyway. I’m somewhere in between.
Director: Louis Leterrier · Cast: Greta Lee, Wagner Moura, Riley Chung, Emma Ho, Noah Alexander Sosnowski
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The Delgado family — engineer Jason (Wagner Moura), mother Ann (Greta Lee), teenage son Graham and younger daughter Ruth — wake up one morning to find their Seattle home completely sealed from outside. Every door, every window. Glass won’t break. The seal is made of rainwater held in place by something they can’t see. Their neighbours are in the same situation. Nobody comes to help.
What follows is five years of survival inside four walls — improvising, adapting, and watching their children grow up in a space that was never meant to be a permanent home. It’s partly a domestic survival drama and partly a creature feature about what’s waiting outside in the rain. It’s better at the first half than the second.
The Last House Trailer
Review: The Last House (Spoiler-Free)
The first thing that struck me watching The Last House was how much it felt like a 90s film. And I mean that as a compliment. Shot partly on 35mm with practical creature effects and a deliberate, unhurried pace, Leterrier has made something that feels closer to a mid-budget studio thriller from 1996 than anything you’d expect from Netflix in 2026. The grain, the texture, the way scenes are allowed to breathe — it’s a specific aesthetic choice, and it works.
The first hour is the film at its best. Watching the Delgado family figure out how to survive inside a sealed house — with no power grid, no supply chain, and no exit — is genuinely compelling. The chimney fishing is the detail that won me over: Jason realises a loose cap has created a small gap, and builds a system of traps to catch animals. It’s practical, believable, and exactly the kind of ingenuity that makes survival films worth watching.
The performances hold up throughout. Wagner Moura is convincing as Jason — the kind of competent, quietly desperate father who keeps moving because stopping isn’t an option. Greta Lee is perhaps underused, but what she’s given she handles well. The children are better than most child performances in horror, which is a low bar that this film clears comfortably.
My main reservation is the family’s reaction to being sealed in. On Day 1, when the doors lock and the glass won’t break, the Delgados are worried — but oddly composed. Most people would completely lose it. Screaming, hyperventilating, trying to break through the ceiling. There’s no real panic, no breakdown, no moment where someone genuinely falls apart. They adapt almost too quickly. It’s a small thing, but it keeps you at arm’s length from fully buying into the premise.
But to be fair, I’m not sure any film has ever got this right — the slow psychological disintegration of prolonged captivity is almost impossible to compress into a watchable runtime. And anyone who lived through 2020 will find something uncomfortably familiar in the setup regardless — a family sealed inside, supplies running low, no information, no clear end in sight. We go deeper into that reading, and what the film is really saying beneath the surface, in our The Last House explained article.
At 112 minutes it’s slightly long, but the film earns most of that runtime. There are enough genuinely tense sequences scattered through the middle act — the tunnel part, the chimney climb — to justify the pace. It never gets boring, it just doesn’t always get where it’s going fast enough. Critics were brutal — 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic score of 45 — and while I think that’s harsher than the film deserves, the complaints about a tonally confused second half are fair.
Speaking of the ending — I won’t spoil it here, but I’ve written a full breakdown in our The Last House ending explained article if you want to dig into what it all means, what the creatures are, and whether the final act holds up logically. Short answer: mostly yes, with one significant stretch.
Did you know?
Netflix built a house on Sunset Boulevard. Before the first trailer dropped, Netflix installed a full-size furnished replica of the Delgado family home on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles — and had a cast member live inside it for several days.
Passersby could watch through the billboard facade. The stunt was deliberately strange, which made it perfect for a film about a family who can’t get out of their house. It generated more social media attention than the trailer.
Verdict
The Last House is not the film critics wanted it to be, and not the disaster they said it was. It’s a solidly made high-concept thriller with a strong first act, a genuinely clever survival premise, and two committed lead performances carrying a script that should or could have been 20 minutes shorter. The 90s-throwback aesthetic works. The chimney fishing works. The ending is a little stretch. It’s okay — not sensational, but not a waste of your evening either.
It’s definitely an enjoyable watch — just don’t expect to be overwhelmed.
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Powered by JustWatchSimilar Movies to The Last House
If the confinement premise or the environmental creature angle worked for you, these films share the same DNA. I’ve put together a full list with the closest matches — from Bird Box to Brick — in our Movies Like The Last House guide.
