For It Is Man's Number: louis leterrier

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Sunday, 16 August 2026

Netflix And Chill: The Last House (2026)

Best known for the many action movies that he's helmed (some great, many not so great), director Louis Leterrier here turns his hand to something a bit more mysterious and dramatic. But he then has to throw some hard-to-follow action into the third act.

The story is quite simple. A family find themselves locked inside their own home. It seems to have been sealed by the rain. And it also seems to have happened to everyone else. The first few days are easy enough to tolerate, but things become very difficult as days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and months turn into years. The family are all alone . . . but they're not really alone. Not whenever the rain starts again.

Having Wagner Moura and Greta Lee in the two main roles here is a big help. Both are very good, and they make it a lot easier to believe in the implausible premise for a decent amount of the runtime. The actors playing their children also do well, with the younger performers (Riley Chung and Alexander Sosnowski) being slightly superior to those who take over the roles (Emma Ho and Gabriel Barbosa) after a time jump.

Leterrier does a decent job of keeping things well-paced throughout the first hour, and the screenplay from Matthew Robinson mixes some tension in with a lot of fun. It's just a shame that, like so many features today, this has to go on for just under two hours. It's actually 112 minutes, but feels a bit longer as the whole thing loses momentum once it starts to deliver the more predictable moments (someone always ends up needing medicine in a post-apocalyptic scenario, and there's a very standard creature feature ending that leads up to a frankly preposterous final revelation). There's also some voiceover narration that really doesn't work.

I doubt many will enjoy this. If you're intrigued by the idea of the family trying to survive while locked in their own home then you won't enjoy when the plot moves sideways. If you're after something more exciting then you won't enjoy all the time spent watching the family trying to survive while locked in their own home. As easily pleased as I am, I even spent some time wondering "when did the toothpaste run out?" and "how have the kids got clothes that still fit them as they have grown older?", questions which wouldn't have popped into my head if I had been more immersed in the film.

And, despite the fact that I usually forget to note such things, animal lovers would be advised to stay away from this. There's quite a lot of animal death here, enough to create what amounts to a montage of hunting/killing as Moura's character creates what he calls "chimney fishing" in an attempt to help keep the family from starving to death.

Maybe worth a single viewing for those with nothing else to watch. I enjoyed more than half of it, but my criticisms and questions were certainly not answered satisfactorily by the time it ended.

6/10

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Tuesday, 20 June 2023

Fast X (2023)

I have mentioned it many times before, but I have a strange relationship with the Fast & Furious franchise. I was never a fan, but they became so ubiquitous that I eventually gave in and started to enjoy them. When things for more preposterous, I became less impressed. Then things got even MORE preposterous and I was won around again. I didn’t love the eighth instalment in the main series, but I really liked the ninth, so I wasn’t sure where I would land on this outing.

I hated it.

Linking back to the end of the fifth film, the plot concerns a villain named Dante (Jason Momoa). Dante is out to avenge the death of his father, and he aims to do that by hurting Dom (Vin Diesel) where he will feel it most. His FAMBLY. Of course, he hasn’t counted on Dom being the best at doing everything ever. Urgh.

Written by Justin Lin and Dan Mazeau, and directed by Louis Leterrier, this is a rambling and laughable mess for most of the runtime. The editing is horrible, genuinely feeling at times as if scenes have been randomly chopped up in the wrong places to intersperse with other scenes, ensuring no real flow or building of tension. Even the ridiculous stunts fail to impress, weighed down by CGI that somehow feels worse than what we were given in the first few movies in the series. There’s one fun sequence set in Rome, thanks to some impressive motorbike work, but the rest will have you feeling more exasperated than excited.

Diesel is the least interesting member of the main group, and when he is asked to show emotion on his face it just looks like he’s been filmed trying to empty his bowels, but the rest of the gang are unable to do much better in a number of scenes that feel like nothing but filler. Okay, John Cena is good fun in the scenes he shares with the youngest main cast member (the kid who plays “little Brian”, but watch this and tell me that we couldn’t have done without the sequence featuring a star cameo when Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Sung Kang are all in London. You would be lying. The women generally fare a bit better, with Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, and Brie Larson all having some decent moments, but Jordan’s Brewster suffers from the fact that she doesn’t feel as capable as the rest of the gang, and her involvement just serves as a reminder that Paul Walker’s character is notable by his absence. Scott Eastwood returns as an agent, and an ally, Alan Ritchson is the other agent in pursuit of our heroes, and last, but not least, is Momoa. I can see some people disliking Momoa in this, he is all kinds of anarchic energy wrapped up in some damn fine threads whenever he’s onscreen, but he is the highlight of the film. His energy, his madness (a scene with him conversing with others while applying some nail varnish is THE best moment of the entire movie), his sheer glee as he watched his plan come together, it’s all a welcome change from the moody and stoic attitude of almost everyone else in the cast (hell, even the banter between Gibson and Ludacris is made more sour in this outing). It’s overdone though, and sometimes feels too much like the film-makers relied on Momoa to be a jacked-up Joker in order to make up for all of the weaknesses elsewhere in the film.

The biggest weakness, aside from the technical end result of the film-making seeming hastily put together and shoddy, is a complete lack of consequence. This feels pointless. Main characters seem to be dead, but we have seen main characters “die” before. Diesel won’t let his hero lose, his ego won’t allow it (unless things lead to a finale that can allow him to become a modern Christ figure), and the abrupt ending here, because this is only the first part of the story, feels like a bit of a slap in the face. Calling it an ending is a stretch, considering how the film really just cuts off with no defining moment for either the heroes or the villains.

Of course I will watch the next (final?) instalment in this series. I came this far with it. I won’t be looking forward to it though. Everyone involved needs to do some major repair work to get this tired and broken engine back in order if they want to cross the finish line in first place. A large fanbase will be cheering them on, but it’s all on those behind the wheel (metaphorically speaking . . . but also literally, in this instance).

4/10