“The Last Sunrise”
(USA/Spain)
Metacritic (5/10), Letterboxd (2.5/5), Imdb.com (5/10), TMDB.com (5/10), Imdb critics review
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From where I stand, as I have said before, predictability is the cardinal sin of filmmaking. If one can foresee what’s going to happen, there’s little point in watching the movie, now is there? And, unfortunately, such is the case here in the latest release from director Carlson Young. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name (2025) by Anna Todd, the cinematic version of this story is a clinic in formulaic filmmaking, where virtually every plot development is apparent from miles away. Indeed, it’s the kind of picture better suited to the sappy sensibilities of The Hallmark Channel than other less cheesy distribution platforms. “The Last Sunrise” tells the tale of a young Houston-based dancer, Oriah (a.k.a. “Ry”) Pera (Maia Reficco), who’s afflicted with a tumorous condition that causes epilepsy. Her prospects aren’t favorable after she suffers an on-stage accident, prompting her mother, Isolde (Eva Longoria), to take her for a summer’s recuperation on the Spanish resort island of Mallorca, where mom is working on a massive new hotel project for a real estate developer. Isolde’s also anxious for her daughter to see where her mom grew up and to reconnect to her own roots, but, once there, her work keeps her so busy that she and Ry spend little time together. With so much free time on her hands, Ry routinely goes off on her own, a practice that unwittingly takes her to a clothing optional beach and introduces her to Julian (Fernando Lindez), a bad boy with an attitude who, paradoxically, works as a humble fisherman with a passionate ecological agenda. And, of course, they naturally fall for one another. But, as their holiday romance emerges, they each hide secrets from one another (she, her illness, and he, his outstanding debt to a badass loan shark), all of which are piled atop even bigger disclosures of which neither of them is aware. So how will everything play out? Well, as discussed earlier, that shouldn’t be too hard to figure out as all the requisite pieces fall into place neatly on cue. While the narrative shows some improvement as the story progresses, much of it nevertheless follows the standard made-for-TV movie template, with plenty of travelogue-type footage thrown in to exquisitely show off its exotic locale. As for the performances, they represent serious cases of miscasting: Longoria looks bored, tediously walking through her role as if she could have phoned it in; Lindez comes across like a refugee from a designer jeans ad who’s desperately in need of English elocution lessons; and Reficco makes for a stunning, vulnerable ingenue, but it’s difficult to fathom that she’s supposedly as ill as she’s said to be, stretching credibility about as tautly as it can go. Fans of romance novels and film versions thereof will undoubtedly find this effort to be right up their alley, but those looking for something with more substance and a lot less frothy fluff can skip this one and not miss a thing.