Korean-American actress Greta Lee and Brazilian actor Wagner Moura star in the sci-fi thriller movie The Last House, which premiered on Netflix on August 7.
Directed by French filmmaker Louis Leterrier, the film centers on a family of four who wake up one morning unable to step through their front door to leave home. Characters Ann, played by Lee, and Jason, played by Moura, must maintain their shelter-turned-prison alongside their two young children amid scarce resources and constant anxiety over what is happening outside.
Screenwriter Matthew Robinson wrote the script for the production. Robinson previously wrote family comedies such as Love and Monsters and Dora and the Lost City of Gold, the movie that launched Peruvian actress Isabela Merced to international fame.
Leterrier directed the feature after working on large scale productions including Now You See Me, Lupin, and Fast X. The project marks another expansion into suspense and science fiction for Netflix.
Cast perspectives and background
Lee spoke about the project with Tudum, the news platform for Netflix. She said that as a child her favorite stories to watch and read were about survival, which drew her to the film immediately, adding that she loved the questions the story raises about the world and how people choose to live in it.
The actress, the daughter of Korean immigrants in the United States, made her Broadway debut at age 24 playing Marcy Park in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. She later gained wide critical recognition starring in the Celine Song romance Past Lives, and also appeared in the latest season of The Morning Show alongside a starring role with Jared Leto in Tron: Ares.
Moura said he was intrigued by the concept of waking up physically locked inside a home without understanding the reason. He added that he thought about how his own family would react to a similar situation.
Moura became the first actor from Brazil nominated for an Academy Award for best actor for his lead role in The Secret Agent. He built his international fame from Latin America through Netflix, after gaining prominence in Brazil with Elite Squad and playing Pablo Escobar in the 2015 series Narcos: Colombia.
Supporting roles and mystery
Young actors Noah Alexander Sosnowski and Riley Chung play the children of the lead characters. Both child actors bring previous experience from action and fantasy productions including Section 8 and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
The secondary cast surrounding the central family includes Emma Ho, Gabriel Barbosa, Sam Lerner, Audrey Anderson, Sid Edwards, Lewis Goody, and Nancy Baldwin. They play a mixture of neighbors, authority figures, and presences that surround the house and heighten the mystery.
