Ordinary people caught up in extraordinarily terrifying events as an otherworldly threat slowly closes in around them is a recognizable formula that Steven Spielberg has practically made his own. Netflix adopted that formula with The Duffer Brothersto create one of its biggest global hits in Stranger Things. Ever since, the streamer has been trying to reproduce that magic, including with the recently ill-fated The Boroughs. Its latest attempt has been critically panned, but despite the poor reviews, it has become yet another ratings success.
The Last House is Netflix’s latest sci-fi thriller film, which premiered on Friday, August 7. The movie stars Greta Lee (Past Lives) and Wagner Moura (Narcos) as a couple living in suburban Seattle who, like the rest of the world, become trapped inside their home with their children after a mysterious disaster strikes across the globe. As the ominous threat looms over them and their resources quickly begin to run out, the family must find a way to survive whatever is happening outside their doors. The film is written by Matthew Robinson and directed by Louis Leterrier, who is set to return to the Fast & Furious franchise to direct its upcoming final installment, Fast Forever.
The Last House debuted atop Netflix’s English-language movie list, but judging by the reviews from both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie was a miss. Critics have given it a rotten 27%, and the audience 28%. Regardless, The Last House benefited from a viral marketing campaign that could give the guys over at NEON a run for their money. The campaign, which saw a man apparently living inside a billboard on Sunset Boulevard, blew up on social media and helped drive curiosity ahead of the movie’s Netflix debut. It clearly paid off, with Netflix reporting that The Last Housedrew 27.5 million viewers in its opening week, making it the streamer’s fifth-biggest opening of the year.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
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🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
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Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
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Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
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Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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Will ‘The Last House’ Get a Sequel?
High viewership numbers almost always help a movie’s chances of getting a sequel, as seen with Alan Ritchson‘s War Machine. Despite not being one of Netflix’s most critically acclaimed titles this year, the military robot thriller drew more than 39 million views, leading Netflix to greenlight a follow-up. For The Last House, however, it’s still too early to call. Its viewing performance is certainly commendable, particularly for a reportedly mid-budget movie. The film currently ranks fifth among Netflix’s biggest movie releases of the year, trailing only the aforementioned War Machine, The Rip, Apex, and Thrash, all of which came with bigger budgets and more star power behind them.
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The Last House has also outperformed Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Office Romance, Swapped, and People We Meet on Vacation. However, whether those numbers will be enough to convince Netflix to give The Last House another go remains to be seen, but at least its stars seem ready to return. Moura has told Collider that he is “very curious” to see what happens after the characters leave the house and to learn more about the film’s mysterious creatures, suggesting that even he sees plenty of unexplored territory following that enigmatic ending. Stay tuned for updates.
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