So I’m back from backpacking to Heart Lake in Yellowstone National Park—had a great trip, thank you very much. Made it home late Monday night and have been struggling to get caught up with everything. As far as my viewing-pleasure goes, I did catch up on episodes of Alone and Silo that were worthy viewing. But first thing I want to write about since returning is a new flick titled The Last House. I rarely want to dis any book or movie because I know people work hard on these things and why something doesn’t turn out to be stellar is not always any one person’s fault. But in this case, I have to speak up.
The latest kooky-fantasy world movie released on Netflix is a both a doozy and a snoozer—The Last House. I’ll try to avoid spoilers here but will add that when we finished watching it, we both said, “Wow. I’m surprised we finished that movie.” As in: I’m surprised we didn’t stop watching and go do something more entertaining, like poking each other with a sharp stick. In a nutshell: It features a cutesy youngish family, husband/wife in their 30s, preteen son and even younger daughter, all lovable and nice to each other until . . . some mysterious force arrives when seals them in their house: Doors/windows won’t open, no way to get out. Same story for all other people in the neighborhood as well. And—at least it’s strongly implied—the rest of the world. Who’s doing this? Alien invasion, perchance?
I won’t give it away, but water is involved. It rains and rains. (What a shocker! They’re in a suburb of Seattle.) The rain aids and abets the mysterious entities who are keeping our ordinary cast of suburbanites sealed inside their homes. (What if you were driving around when all this “sealing” unfolded? Or walking through a field, minding your own business? Details imply this would not be good.)
Cut to five years later: Somehow this plucky family has managed to survive never leaving their own home by trapping critters in their driveway with this trap/contraption Dad made, which works like a charm even though it appears as if it would have no chance in hell of being functional. They’ve learned to hide and evade the mysterious entities who come out in the rain. (Most people are dead by now. Like, in the whole world. Except this plucky family!)
The ending really makes no sense but imparts an important moral: Be kind to mysterious water-creature alien-things and maybe they won’t kill you. Let that be a lesson for us all.