Every so often, a real-life tragedy finds its way to the screen, leaving us to question the circumstances surrounding the events. With that on top of current events centered around Christianity, it’s no wonder Fast & Furious director Justin Lin returned to indie filmmaking to offer insight into a missionary’s trip gone wrong. In late 2018, the story of an American evangelical Christian missionary, John Allen Chau, took the world by storm when a visit to North Sentinel Island left him for ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. Last Days
is as frustrating to watch as it is to try to understand this avoidable tragedy.

Sky Yang plays John Chau over four years. During the earlier sequences, we witness a scrawny high school student struggling with what to do about his future. John wants to fulfill what he believes to be his life’s purpose, which is to spread the goodness of Christianity. On the other hand, his father (Ken Leung) longs for John to follow in his footsteps by going to medical school to become a doctor. Of course, by the тιтle, we all know what happens, but the journey there is questionable, making me wonder how many liberties were taken with this script.

Last Days Is Perplexing Thanks To Decisions For Its Main Character

I can’t decide if Lin wanted us to understand what drove Chau to dedicate his life towards the Sentinelese or if his end goal was to shed light on the dangers of missionary work. In Last Days, he does neither efficiently. To be fair, many of the conversations involving John’s ideals do come off as religious grooming, but it’s too easy of a scapegoat. The problem is, to convince us of that, one has to shed light on these conversations on a deeper level, yet Lin’s script just refuses to do so.

The other approach is to try to get us to understand this tragedy by revealing a part of John’s mind or experiences that can lead to some answers. Throughout the story, however, there’s not much shown to help us understand his devotion. Last Days takes it one step further by making his decisions seem drastic from where the story begins. He ends up going to med school in Lin’s feature, only to drop out at a later date to pursue missionary work. The storytelling and the character development do not line up, making for a frustrating watching experience.

A third of the way through is where things become interesting, after it’s decided that we’ll likely never truly understand why John chose this path. Upon arrival at his missionary boot camp, we see the devout training and exercises one must go through to be deemed ready and capable. The film began to take the tone of an adventure movie in a way that left me conflicted. Knowing the ending, the journey in Last Days felt glamorized, almost as if it was written as a blueprint for what to do to become a missionary.

Even When Last Days Gets Interesting, Lin’s Script Is Uncertain About Taking A Stance

Despite this conflict, the film does begin to ask interesting questions about John. Was this truly about winning souls for Jesus Christ? Or had it evolved into one man’s conquest to make something more of his life? Seemingly, the film answers these questions by framing John’s mission as one of someone who’s feeling lost. I can’t say I like this angle, especially since John isn’t here to speak for himself. But those diary entries, to me, demonstrate a young man of strong faith, so I wish the film leaned more heavily on them.

Last Days isn’t entirely a lost cause. Oliver Bokelberg’s cinematography, for example, stands out in a way that offers peace before the looming tragedy sets in. His landscapes and cinematic sequences often introduce a much-needed grandness to the storytelling. Nathan Alexander’s music is so great, technically, but the placement of uplifting scores at moments of uncertainty and questioned faith left me with a sense of dread. I couldn’t help but feel this film, as a whole, almost served as a mockery of John Chau, disguised as an attempt to understand him.

Ultimately, Last Days did not give me a deeper understanding of John Allen Chau as a person, which is why the film ultimately fails. Even if Lin had nothing intentional to say about Chau, he also took too timid an approach towards analyzing the extremities of missionary work. We can all agree that this was a tragic end to a life with so much potential. But thanks to its frustrating structure and distasteful ending, we won’t be able to realize how much potential thanks to a film that refuses to help us connect with its central character.

Last Days premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.