Sundance movie review: ‘Last Days’ a respectful portrayal of a missionary’s death

Sky Yang stars as John Allen Chau in "Last Days," which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute

PARK CITY, UTAH Jan. 29 (UPI) — Last Days, which premiered Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival, is a respectful dramatization of the events that led to John Allen Chau’s death on North Sentinel Island in 2018. Chau was a lone missionary who attempted to bring Christianity to the island’s tribe.

Sky Yang plays Chau, introduced as he approaches North Sentinel by kayak in 2018. The film flashes back to his missionary schooling and intercuts with police in India trying to intercept him before he violates restrictions on approaching the island.

Last Days marks director Justin Lin’s first movie since leaving the production of Fast X. Screenwriter Ben Ripley adapts Alex Perry’s Outside Magazine article “The Last Days of John Allen Chau.”

The film respects the faith and conviction of the missionaries without judgment. Even though the tragic outcome is already known, the filmmakers see the sincerity of the missionaries.

Other characters in the film raise relevant issues with the missionaries’ presumption of intruding upon remote societies, but the film doesn’t portray the missionaries as villains.

Filmed on location in India and Thailand, Lin and cinematographer Oliver Bokelberg illustrate Chau’s journeys with majestic shots of elephants in the streets, a prop plane flying over a mountain range, and more location footage.

Following Chau’s death, Indian inspector Meera Ganali (Radhika Apte) is a smart investigator who takes no guff from suspects. She is dealing with an uncooperative Captain (Naveen Andrews), which shows the frustration of bureaucracy.

The film conveys the international significance of one person’s choice. India protects the North Sentinels and its inhabitants as much as they are protecting outsiders. Since Chau is American, the U.S. Embassy gets involved too.

It is also important to show that missionary academies have thorough training programs to prepare people for this work. Participants train to fix cars and navigate forests, anticipating dangers they will likely have to confront.

The sight of a mostly White crew in khakis imitating a native tribe as a training exercise highlights the hypocrisy of the endeavor. These modernized people have thought of everything except leaving natives alone.

The last third of the film somewhat loses its way with some cringy dialogue and pat exposition. An Australian tourist (Marny Kennedy) has talking points against Western imperialism ready to go when John shares his plans with her.

Other dialogue between John and a fellow missionary (Toby Wallace) about the appeal of Christian men to women does the film no favors. A flashback to John as a child lost at a carnival appears, in case it wasn’t clear the film saw John as a lost child. An unnecessary scene, considering characters also explicitly say as much.

But many biopics have committed greater offenses. For shining a light on what motivations could make someone attempt to contact a remote tribe, and being as fair to him as it is to those people, Last Days is a worthwhile film.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.

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