HOUSE ARREST
HOUSE ARREST
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS, EVEN UNDER THE MOST EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES... DIRECTOR LOUIS LETERRIER ON HIS SCI-FI GENRE-BENDER
WORDS: MATT MAYTUM
LOUIS LETERRIER IS surprisingly upbeat when he talks to SFX, even though it’s 7.00am local time for him in New York, and he’s just finished a night shoot on his next film (see far right). “You know us directors, we don’t rest,” he laughs. “We don’t need it. It’s pure adrenaline.” Given the pace of his films, and his prolific output, you can believe him.
The film he’s chatting about today – the one that viewers will be able to watch on Netflix this summer – is high-concept sci-fi The Last House. The screenplay by Matthew Robinson (Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die) immediately caught the eye of the French director. “This came in my inbox, and the [working] title was ‘11817’, all spelled out. That was on the front cover. I was like, ‘What is this thing?’”
The arresting premise is the kind of skin-prickling idea that instantly intrigues. It’s also a setup that would’ve played very differently any time pre-2020, as we can now all relate to being trapped at home during the Covid lockdowns. “I started reading and at first I was like, ‘Okay, well, I get it. It’s a movie I’m interested in because we’ve all lived it. We’ve all been trapped in our houses.’ But the character work was so great. Matthew Robinson did such a great job, so instantly I was hooked. Then the more I kept reading, the more I found myself thinking about my own life and about our world, about everything, and really I became obsessed. I know the movie is right when I want to start rereading it right away, which I did.”