The Last House joins a vaguely defined but fun genre
I think I like this genre that seems to be “horror or sci-fi or something?” — Backrooms, Disclosure Day and last Friday’s Netflix release The Last House seem to fit in that nicely fluid category. I think the mishmash helps to make the movie interesting and watchable in a way that a more straightforward jump-scares-and-slasher affair wouldn’t be, at least for me, even when it’s imperfect.
The Last House begins with a regular family in a suburb in coastal Washington state doing regular life stuff: Parents Jason (Wagner Moura) and Anne (Greta Lee) talk about the problems a repair guy found with their home’s chimney cracks and foundation and worry about money, kids Ruth (Riley Chung) and Graham (Noah Alexander Sosnowski) call each other stupid. The family heads out to get a Christmas tree, even though it has started raining, but when they try to open the door, it won’t open. Nor will the back door. Nor will the windows, even when Jason tries to smash them open. After some frantic “what is happening” — but no calling the police because phones and internet are down — the family notices that their neighbors are also looking out their front windows, unable to get outside. With some signs-in-windows communication, the neighbors learn that this spreads streets away and Jason and Anne decide to put on a good face for the kids, sit tight and stay safe.
What happens next is — well, if you’re old enough to read this, you know what happens next because we all lived it six years ago as this movie gives strong Covid lockdown vibes. The family takes stock of the supplies they have. They dig out things to amuse themselves with (with no internet they end up relying on the two DVDs the family still has, 1982’s Annie and 1997’s Air Force One). They give up on the idea of “sticking to a school routine” pretty quickly (extremely relatable!). Anne starts a countertop garden.
From their windows, the family, especially Ruth, observes some strangeness out in the world. It suddenly rains a lot more, and the rain “looks different,” Ruth says. She also starts to draw pictures of the odd creature-like shapes she sees in the rain. Her parents, who are trying to keep their freakout under wraps from the kids, just sort of shush these observations while dealing with things like the knowledge that an older neighbor couple has run out of food and their own family dog has run out of medicine.
This built in shorthand that the movie gets to use for its vibe-building — putting you back in the emotions of the pandemic — could be considered either a cheat or an economical way to put you in the characters’ mindset, and I think both of those opinions are fair. It worked for me largely because of the Lee and Moura performances and the sometimes prickly way they related to each other. The way the movie balances existential panic and the unexpected joy of family time is nicely played.
The “horror or sci-fi or something” of it all feels less solid, and the deeper the movie goes into that, the less it holds together, both as a compelling thing to watch and as a story with sense-making internal logic. There is both that Netflix-y “remember this thing that happened 10 minutes ago” tendency of over-explaining and some handwaving about the mechanics of everything that is happening, especially as we get into the final act, which still has a bit of an “action goes here, details TK” feel.
Speaking of the “horror…?” genre, Obsession, another one of this year’s “tiny budget, big box office” success stories, is now streaming on Peacock (it is also available for rent or purchase). Obsession’s big scary thing is the deep emotional immaturity of lead male character Bear (Michael Johnston). He is so incapable of expressing his thoughts, feelings and desires that when his crush/co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette) comes out and asks him if he likes her, he just sputters something about them being good friends. Cursing himself, he makes a wish: that Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world. Specifically, he makes a wish using a One Wish Willow, a crystal-store novelty purchase that is supposed to grant the one wish he makes before breaking the little willow branch. Bear seems aware of the monkey paw possibilities of this item, making his wish particularly poorly verbalized. But, moments later, Nikki appears, asking to go home with him to his house and flirting with him, but doing it erratically enough that even the desperate Bear wonders what is wrong. And even though part of him believes “dude, Nikki is crazy,” Bear mostly doesn’t care and is just happy to have her suddenly latch herself to him.
Despite some jump scares and odd Nikki smiles and skittery walking, the movie doesn’t feel Horror horror to me, more sort of meanly funny with a side of “you get what you deserve, dummy.” (There is grossness and gore, which picks up as the movie goes along.) Bear is both a lump of bozo and a guy that has stolen the agency of the girl he claims to love. Nikki is broken? Or being psychically held hostage and tortured? You kind of wish the movie would let us see more of her righteous rage.
I didn’t exactly enjoy the movie but there are elements that make me relatively satisfied with having watched it. I’ve seen other critics call out the sound design, and the way the movie uses sound is maybe its biggest special effect, the thing that truly sells some of its weirdest moments. And I am rather impressed with how unlikeable Obsession lets Bear be — I am not exactly rooting for the thing that is tormenting him but I am never rooting for Bear.
Whilst on Peacock, I checked out another spring theatrical release, You, Me & Tuscany(also available for rent or purchase). I think seeing it on a streaming service I’m already paying for is possibly the correct way to see this middling romance confection that feels like less a thing you watch and more a thing you have on. Everybody is very pretty or charming or both in this movie about Anna (Halle Bailey, still reading a little bit like a Disney princess), a culinary school dropout who spends her time drifting between housesitting assignments in New York City, pretending to live the life of her rich clients. After getting fired from a job for wearing the client’s couture, she meets Italian charmer Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), who tells her all about his Tuscan villa. Coincidentally, she has a plane ticket to Tuscany, for a trip she planned to make with her mother before her mother passed away. Anna decides to take that trip and, when she learns that she’s showed up with no hotel reservations during the middle of a popular festival week, she decides Matteo “practically invited” her to stay at his villa and breaks in. Through a series of misunderstandings, Matteo’s mother (Isabella Ferrari) and grandmother (Stefania Casini) believe Anna is Matteo’s new fiancee and Anna, eager not to get arrested, goes along with it. She winds up meeting the whole family, including Matteo’s cousin/adopted brother Michael (Regé-Jean Page), a tall handsome winemaker, as she describes him, who she is even more attracted to than almost-one-night-stand Matteo.
There is nothing surprising about the events here, beautiful people in beautiful clothes in beautiful Italian settings in a story with dialogue that all feels maybe one step up from Netflix rom-com. But it’s pretty to look at and basically inoffensive — though for a movie that talks a lot about food and Anna’s onetime love of cooking, it’s pretty below average on showing us glamour shots of Italian cuisine. I don’t know that Bailey and Page have chemistry, per se, but he is very handsome and, at least twice, he is wet and shirtless and maybe that is close enough to chemistry.
Also on Peacock, among the tonnage of Saturday Night Live content, is Lorne (also a spring release, also now available for rent or purchase), a documentary nominally about Lorne Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live, a 50-year-old TV show helmed by a man creeping up on 82 years. Lorne the man seems like he is A Lot, both as a person to have to wrangle for interviews and a person to have as your boss, but Lorne is a fun hang, with SNL luminaries past and present talking about knowing and working for him. As much as we get biographical details about Michaels — born in Canada, left SNL after five years only to come back five seasons later, owns dogs? — the doc gives us the rhythm of the show, both throughout a week of putting it together and throughout the seasons and the flow of cast members. SNL is a bit of a factory that has to put out its product, ready or not, through strong cast and writer years and weaker ones, with great material and with sketches that make Michaels forlornly sigh. It has its winners and its losers and its rebuilding periods. I found the legacy aspect of the story this documentary tells — what the show has been and the uncertainty of what it will be once Michaels is gone — as thoughtful as the stories from John Mulaney and Maya Rudolph and the like are funny.
Featured photo: The Last House.
