On Screen: “The Last House”

The Last House

Horror has always been one of the most popular genres, beginning with Dracula and Frankenstein in the 1930s and German Expressionist films like Nosferatu in the silent era.

Traditionally, horror features a monster, perhaps supernatural, while the sub-genre of psychological horror gradually builds tension by focusing on the mental, emotional and physical states of its characters.

“The Last House” encompasses both, opening with Arthur C. Clarke’s quote: “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.”

Meet the Delgado family. Unemployed engineer Jason (Wagner Moura) and his wife Ann (Greta Lee) worry about signs of structural damage in the chimney of the suburban Seattle home as their preteen kids Graham (Noah Alexander Sosnowski) and Ruth (Riley Chung) watch a torrential November rainstorm outside.

Suddenly — without warning — doors won’t open and windows cannot be broken. They and their neighbors are mysteriously sealed inside their respective homes. Communication with the outside world vanishes, and there’s something ominously alien and/or otherworldly lurking outside.

At first, their enforced isolation seems like an inconvenience. They still have electricity, water, enough food to suffice — and they learn to value togetherness. As for diversion, there’s an abundance of art supplies, an old vinyl record collection and a couple of DVDs (“Annie” and “Air Force One”).

But then days become weeks. Weeks become months. Five years pass.

Food rationing is obvious, but what happens when that’s depleted? Animal lovers won’t want to stick around for the demise of the beloved family dog and Jason’s subsequent improvisation of chimney fishing.

Imprecisely scripted by Matthew Robinson and directed as a survivalist story by Louis Leterrier (“Fast X”), the premise is intriguing, particularly having endured the 2020 Covid lockdown, but its lack of individual character development in this claustrophobic environment becomes almost as frustrating as the idea of suddenly starting the battery of the old Pontiac Firebird stored in the garage.

And with global sea levels rising due to climate change — as an all-too-vague creature-feature — its concluding tentacled aquatic twist really falters.