The official trailer has landed for Last Days, Justin Lin’s true-story drama about missionary John Allen Chau and his fatal journey to North Sentinel Island. Watch the trailer above and read on for the essentials.
The story
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“North Sentinel [Island] is the Mount Everest of the missionary world,” someone warns. “Start with something smaller.” “I’m not thinking small. I’m going big,” Chau (newcomer Sky Yang) shoots back. From there, the trailer follows his survival prep and push toward North Sentinel Island in the Andamans, while an island detective (Radhika Apte) races to stop him.
At home, his father (Ken Leung) pleads, “John, your mother and I have always supported you… but this is too extreme.” The cautions get starker: “The Sentinelese won’t just kill you.”
Justin Lin’s angle
After years of Fast & Furious and Star Trek Beyond, Lin pivots back to indie scale—closer to the roots of his breakout, 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow, a crime drama about Asian American teens. “We romanticize the notion of indie movies, but the reality is, you don’t get to make movies by yourself,” Lin said in an interview with Esquire. “When you have a point of view and passion, and you need to communicate that to your team—that has always been the North Star, and I didn’t know it.”
The project grew from Lin reading Alex Perry’s Outside article, “The Last Days of John Allen Chau” (which you can read in full HERE), and interrogating his own snap judgment. “I went on this two-year journey with Ben [Ripley], just making sure that our point of view is to have empathy for these characters,” he said. “Let’s not judge these characters. Let’s be these characters.”
Cast & creative
Yang stars as Chau, with Ken Leung as his father and Radhika Apte as the investigating officer. Also in the mix: Naveen Andrews, Toby Wallace, and Ciara Bravo.
The screenplay was written by Ben Ripley (Source Code), inspired by Perry’s Outside article. Lin produces alongside Clayton Townsend, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Eric Robinson, Salvador Gatdula, and Andrew Schneider.
Release date
Last Days will open in U.S. cinemas on October 24.
