I try to watch any and all major horror movie releases in a given year, so when one hits #1 on the Netflix top 10 list, it certainly catches my eye. This past week, that’s been The Last House, boasting a stellar pair of award-nominated leads, Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) and Greta Lee (Past Lives).

The Last House tells the story of a family trapped in their residence with no way out. Doors don’t work, windows don’t open, they can’t even smash through the glass or the walls. It may come off as a supernatural concept, which would actually be kind of neat, but this is not that kind of movie. No supernatural forces here, and you learn early on (very mild spoilers follow) that this is, in effect, an alien film. There are some caveats there, but everyone is being kept inside by a force field created by rain. This isn’t “magic” in the traditional sense.

From here, this becomes about survival. Not surviving nightly attacks or anything, but literally just rationing food and water and attempting not to go insane when you’re stuck in your 1,500 square foot house with your family indefinitely. This is not a terribly exciting thing to witness for almost two hours.

There are many, many horror films that revolve almost entirely around a single house, whether someone is trapped in it or chased around it. Hush, You’re Next, Don’t Breathe, His House, to name a few. They are excellent. They are also scary.

The Last House spends half of its PG-13 runtime having the family dance around the house, having a blast during forced quarantine (this isn’t a metaphor, is it?), and it’s just wildly out of tone for what you would have imagined was going to be a tense, claustrophobic thriller. Only near the very end do they start to lose their grip, and then it turns, briefly, into a creature feature reminiscent of the (much better) Crawl. Then, the film ends with what I have to describe as one of the worst and nonsensical finales I have ever seen in this genre. No exaggeration.

Moura and Lee seem exhausted to be here, victims of dangled Netflix checks but without the quality project to back it up. This could have worked here with director Louis Letterier, responsible for the Transporter movies, Now You See Me, Fast X and even the technically first MCU movie, The Incredible Hulk. But his track record is uneven at best, and The Last House is a miss on every level. The best thing I can say about it was that I was tired the afternoon I watched it, but at least I didn’t fall asleep during it.

There are roughly 60 other, better horror movies to watch on Netflix right now, both streaming originals and licensed classics. Do yourself a favor and watch one of those instead of The Last House, or else you will wish you had that time back, particularly after its final moments.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller seriesand The Earthborn Trilogy.