Netflix is releasing its own Cloverfield-style sci-fi thriller 1 week before J.J. Abrams does

Suburbia has never been so threatening

It's a well-known saying that there are no new ideas in Hollywood, but sometimes, two movies come out shortly after one another that truly feel like the exact same film, just with different fonts. Think of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, and They Will Kill You — two thrillers about a pair of sisters who must avoid being hunted by a Satanic cult of wealthy elites. Or Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998. While this can often be a gleeful case of ‘Hey, two cakes!’ if you like the premise, it can also spark competition among film studios. One has to do better than the other, after all.

With all that in mind, director J.J. Abrams of Star Wars fame must be feeling some pressure, knowing that the upcoming movie The End of Oak Street, which he's producing under his Bad Robot banner, arrives one week after the seemingly very similar Netflix thriller, The Last House. Both films follow a family whose lives in suburbia are upended by mysterious circumstances.

What is The Last House about?

If you thought yourself a homebody before, director Louis Leterrier of Lupin fame seems to have made The Last House to directly challenge that lifestyle. Starring Greta Lee (Past Lives) and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) as married couple Riley and Jason, the family of four wake up one day to find themselves sealed inside their own home with no way out.

As days turn into weeks and weeks into months, they soon realize that the whole world is suffering from the same problem. As their food supply dwindles, the family is forced to ration their resources, and by the end of a year, their lives look very different from what they once were.

With no connection to the outside world, it’s only when the family finally sees someone outside that they start to question whether the entity keeping them locked in their homes isn’t punishing them but protecting them from danger. It’s a very creepy premise with many creative possibilities for what this strange entity could be.

What is The End of Oak Street about?

Set in the 1980s, The End of Oak Street follows the Platts, starring Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada 2) as Denise Platt, Ewan McGregor (Doctor Sleep) as her husband, Greg Platt, and Maisy Stella and Christian Convery as their two children, Audrey and Brian.

The Platts one day wake up to discover that their neighborhood, Oak Street, has been transported to a location with dinosaurs and other dangerous prehistoric creatures. Lost and confused, the Platts have no other choice but to stick together, explore their new surroundings, and figure out a plan to survive.

What is the difference between The Last House and The End of Oak Street?

When you get into the nitty-gritty, the two thrillers differ in several specifics. For one thing, The End of Oak Street’s Platt family can leave their house. However, it seems their entire neighborhood was relocated, leaving them stranded in an unfamiliar place where, as the trailer reveals, dinosaurs roam freely. It’s a kooky sci-fi premise where the mystery of the what and why will no doubt be enough to get curious butts on seats when it releases this upcoming August.

The Last House, on the other hand, looks as though it’ll lean into a more scary side of the sci-fi-thriller genre. Lee and Moura’s fictional family is locked inside with no way out and no information about what’s happening outside their home. Furthermore, as revealed in the film’s press release, director Leterrier seems more focused on the family home being transformed into a place of horror, where life outside its walls serves as a painful reminder of the life they once led.

Yet for all their differences, what’s intimately similar about these two films is that these families' idyllic suburban lives are under threat, shepherded into being by a danger whose identity they are still unaware of. Whether the films will differ on the intentions behind that entity remains to be seen.

When is The Last House release date?

At the time of writing, Netflix has announced that The Last House will be available to stream on the service starting August 7. This will be a full week before The End of Oak Street’s debut on the silver screen on August 14.