5 Best Sci-Fi Survival Thrillers Like The Last House, Ranked

Louis Leterrier’s The Last House landed on Netflix recently, and the setup was very simple. A family of four wakes up sealed inside their own home, with no way out due to a mysterious disaster. With little explanation of their woes and supplies that will not last, the family of four is forced to learn to survive. Greta Lee and Wagner Moura play the parents holding it together.

Critics were not kind, and the film currently sits at 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie fumbled on a great premise and promising leads, as the middle portion was repetitive and the ending a huge letdown. The five films below are ranked on how well they work as survival thrillers, and how they hold up against Netflix’s The Last House.

5 Vivarium (2019)

Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots in Vivarium | Credits: Saban Films

Every house in Yonder is the same shade of green, arranged in identical rows beneath painted clouds. Lorcan Finnegan brings real unease out of that airless sameness in Vivarium. Tom and Gemma tour the development on a whim and discover they cannot drive out of it no matter which road they take.

Soon a baby arrives in a cardboard box with instructions to raise him. Imogen Poots is superb as a woman being hollowed out by domestic routine. No film here shares more DNA with The Last House, but its deliberate monotony ends up blunting its own tension, earning it the fifth place here.

4 Leave the World Behind (2023)

Julia Roberts in a still from Leave the World Behind | Credits: Netflix

Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind also closely resembles The Last House in structure, which makes it the least flattering comparison available. Two families end up sharing a Long Island rental as the internet collapses and container ships run themselves aground.

Esmail is far more interested in the suspicion curdling between Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali than in whatever is happening beyond the driveway. His restless camera work makes even the furniture feel untrustworthy. It ranks fourth because the film’s ideas consistently outpace its ability to generate dread.

3 It Comes at Night (2017)

Joel Edgerton in a still from It Comes at Night | Credits: A24

Trey Edward Shults understood that the real danger in a collapsing world is other people, and he built his entire film on that suspicion. Joel Edgerton plays a father enforcing a strict code inside a boarded-up house while a plague burns through everything outside. The arrival of a second family slowly turns his rules into a weapon.

Shot in lantern light and steadily narrowing frames, the house appears to contract around everyone in it. The Last House hints at the same moral rot without ever committing to it. Third place reflects how deliberately cold this one is.

2 A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

Lupita Nyong’o in a still from A Quiet Place: Day One | Credits: Paramount Pictures

Michael Sarnoski’s prequel rewinds the franchise to the very first day the sound-hunting aliens descended. A Quiet Place: Day One relocates the terror from the previous movies’ rural silence to the deafening chaos of New York City. Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o leads as Sam, a terminally ill woman navigating the invasion alongside a frightened stranger played by Joseph Quinn.

The film wrings tension from a city where a single scream means death. The fear factor is relentless, but what elevates it is the emotional core. The story is about finding connection and dignity when the end has already arrived.

1 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 10 Cloverfield Lane | Credits: Paramount Pictures

John Goodman has never been more frightening than he is here, playing a survivalist who locks Mary Elizabeth Winstead‘s Michelle in his basement. However, he may have rescued her from a far more sinister airborne catastrophe. Dan Trachtenberg sustains that uncertainty for an entire film.

The horror works in 10 Cloverfield Lane because Goodman is occasionally, but infuriatingly, correct. Every attempt Michelle makes to get out is staged as a practical engineering problem, which is exactly the tension The Last House promised and could not sustain. It takes the top spot because its reveal opens the story up rather than shutting it down.

Which of these would you rewatch over The Last House? Let us know in the comments below!