Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a 2013 Spanish sci-fi thriller film, titled The Last Days. Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care. In the year 2013, a mysterious epidemic spreads across the planet, causing people to develop an irrational fear of going outside. If they do, they die within seconds.
Soon, the streets of every city and town around the world become a wasteland with not a single person outside. Marc Delgado has been living in his workplace for three months, surviving on the food from the cafeteria and helping his coworkers dig a passageway in the parking lot that could take them to the subway. One day, he notices someone broke the window of a car to steal a GPS, which makes him quite angry and provokes him into digging more aggressively.
This turns out to be a positive thing, because thanks to him, they finally break the wall and find a safe way out of the building. Now everyone is getting ready to leave, and while waiting in line for some provisions, Marc can't help noticing one of his bosses, Enrique, has the GPS in his bag. Marc decides to follow him and confront him about it, and Enrique accepts to talk in private as long as Marc doesn't tell anybody else about it.
Marc starts remembering how he met Enrique. Many months ago, the man was hired to take care of the company's productivity problems and was known for being ruthless when it came to treating employees, firing them without hesitation if necessary. When he called Marc to his office, he scolded him for taking so long with the project, refusing to hear how difficult the process of programming is, and gave him an ultimatum: he had to be done by the end of the month or he'd lose his job.
Marc stayed until late at the office, working on his code and getting more frustrated by the second every time it fails. His girlfriend Julia called him to tell him she and her friend Andrea were closing up their shop, and Marc promised her he'd be there for dinner. However, his computer blue-screened, and he ended up staying longer than planned.
When he finally made it to his apartment, he noticed that his neighbor opened his door just to see him arrive, and his girlfriend already had dinner without him. He founds her making toys for her shop, and while looking at a puppet she considered keeping for the future, she brought up the subject of having a baby, to which Marc replied he didn't think it was the right moment. Later that night, he couldn't sleep so he watched some tv.
The news was talking about a Canadian teenager that recorded his suicide after spending six months inside his house, never leaving because of fear. The next morning at work, everyone was watching the same clip, causing Marc's coworker Rovira to nervously leave the area. Another coworker pointed out he hadn't changed his clothes or taken a shower in days.
Back in the present, Marc tells Enrique that he wants to find his girlfriend, and the only way to properly navigate the subway tunnels is with the GPS, since phones don't have a signal anymore. He offers Enrique a deal: if he takes Marc to his girlfriend, he'll give him all the supplies he took from Rovira's locker. Enrique at first says no, but he changes his mind pretty quickly when Marc threatens to tell everyone about the stolen GPS.
After saying goodbye to their coworkers, the two men enter the subway tunnels. The GPS is working fine but they keep it off to save the battery life, and for now, they make do with a subway map. There are lots of people down there already, and they even hear gunshots, so they hurry up until they make it to the station, which is full of survivors from wall to wall.
Suddenly, a teenager steals Enrique's bag with the GPS. He and Marc start chasing him through the station, following him upstairs and even dodging a fire until they make it to an area behind the turnstile. The kid joins three men that include his brother, who is a former cop and carries a gun.
As the city outside finally starts losing all its power, the cop makes them fall to their knees while his brother finds the GPs in the backpack, then he comes closer to get Marc's bag as well. When the lights go off inside the station too, Enrique jumps on the cop and struggles with him for the gun while Marc tackles the boy and recovers the GPS after it falls on the floor and gets its screen cracked. With the bag safe in his arms, Marc hides behind a column while Enrique manages to get the gun from the cop and kills him before wounding his partner with a shot as well.
Then he joins Marc and together they run away, easily mixing themselves in the crowd thanks to the darkness that has now taken over the place. They stop by the stairs to bandage the cut Enrique has on his hand and to check if the GPS is still working after it fell, thankfully it does. When Marc sees Enrique is keeping the gun, he thinks he's about to be left behind, but Enrique says he's going to keep his part of the deal.
Marc starts thinking about the days before the lockdown again. One morning, when he was leaving his apartment to go to work, he heard a big amount of flies inside his neighbor's place and noticed the door was open, so he went inside to see what was going on. He found the entire apartment filled with trash bags and a putrid smell that made him cough.
His neighbor found him and attacked him with a knife, wondering why he came inside when he had never taken interest in him before and didn't even know his name. Marc asked him for how long he had stayed inside, and the man said he hadn't left the apartment in months. He tried to, but he was too scared and couldn't do it.
Afterward, Marc went to work, where he saw Rovira being dragged away by security guards after he got fired for having been sleeping in the office and never going home. Marc followed them out as Rovira tried his best to fight back to no avail: the guards dragged him outside, and he immediately started convulsing. Having a theory of what was going on, Marc told the guards to help him take him back inside, but it was too late: Rovira was already dead.
Afterward, Marc checked Rovira's locker and found a bunch of survival supplies, like a flashlight, a gas canister, and canned food. Later in the evening, he told Julia about what happened and how he thought something serious was going on. Julia comforted him and they made love.
Back in the present, Marc wakes up from a nap and doesn't see Enrique anywhere, so he thinks he's abandoned him, but Enrique soon shows up with a plastic bag he's retrieved to protect the GPS from water damage. The two men return to the subway tunnels, where Marc tries to find out what or who is waiting for Enrique at his destination, but he refuses to answer. He also notices how Enrique saves the seeds of everything he eats, like apples.
Some moments later, with the help of the GPS, they found an entrance to the sewers and jump inside, not getting hurt because the water cushions their fall. They use the GPS again to find their way around and eventually, they arrived at the area under Marc's apartment building. To get inside, they make a simple plan: they hang the gas canister from the ceiling pipes and they'll make explode by shooting it with the gun.
Enrique fails his shot, so Marc takes over and tries himself, also failing his first try and causing his ear to bleed with the noise. When he tries again, however, he does hit the mark and the resulting explosion throws him back on the floor. Enrique helps him stand up and together, they climb the debris and go through the hole to access the building, which just like the station is also filled with refugees.
His old neighbor is still living in the same apartment, but the door to Marc's has its lock broken. They can see an eye looking at them through the spyhole and this infuriates Marc, who starts yelling and pushing the door that is being held back by a man speaking in a foreign language. Taking advantage of the man's exposed hand, Marc bites it, causing him to step back and finally getting to enter his home.
The man threatens them with a knife and Enrique takes out his gun in return, reaching an impasse until the man's wife and daughter show up. The little girl understands their language and explains they didn't have anywhere to go, so they took the apartment because it was empty. After both men put their weapons down, Marc tells them the place is his and takes a photograph of Julia from the wall to ask them if they've seen her, but they swear there was nobody there when they arrived.
Afterward, they take took a look around the place. Enrique finds no food in the fridge, but there are dead doves being prepared to eat, and an old popcorn bag in the trashcan from which he retrieves the seeds - he also takes a kitchen knife with him. Marc, meanwhile, goes to Julia's worktable and after finding her puppet, he grabs a drawing the little girl made and turns around the sheet of paper when he sees the name of a doctor on the corner: it's the picture of an ultrasound, because Julia has been pregnant since the last time he saw her and he didn't know about it.
Marc starts remembering their last time together. They were watching the news about the pandemic they were calling "the Panic", which was causing more and more deaths around the world. The government asked the citizens to stay calm and to keep on carrying on their everyday lives as usual, which infuriated Marc.
His mood got worse when the news changed to show pregnant women giving birth in awful conditions and he started to rant about the irresponsibility of it all, which made Julia finally understand that he never truly wanted kids and all his given reasons through the years were just excuses. Upset and crying, she ran and locked herself in the bathroom, ignoring him when Marc tried to talk to her through the door. He left for work then, already noticing how there weren't many people on the streets and the trash was piling up in the cans, a man in the subway was even wearing a mask.
When he made it to the office, he called Julia, but it was Andrea who picked up her phone, telling him Julia didn't want to talk to him at the moment. Getting desperate, Marc decided to go back, especially after both the phone and nearby televisions lost their connection. However, as soon as he stepped outside, he started to feel sick, so he had to run back inside and stay there permanently.
Back in the present, it has started to rain, so Marc and Enrique help the family gather water by using an old stretcher. Soon people all over the city are using sticks to put buckets and pots under the rain to refill their water reserve. In the evening, Enrique carves two spears out of broomsticks, and Marc fills various bottles with the newly acquired water, he also puts Julia's puppet in his bag.
They get back into the sewers in the morning, and when they reach a split, they argue over what way to choose. Marc wants to go to the mall where Julia used to work to see if she's there, but Enrique refuses, saying his deal was only to take him to his apartment and it isn't his fault she wasn't there when they arrived. He even takes out his knife to defend himself and wonders aloud if Julia is even alive, which makes Marc furious and causes him to jump on him to beat him up.
In the struggle, Enrique drops the knife, and Marc drops the flashlight, which breaks when it hits the floor. The two men break up the fight and Marc demands to know what Enrique has that could be more important than his wife and baby, so Enrique finally confesses he wants to go to the hospital his father has been staying at after he lost the capacity to move because of an embolism. He also tells Marc that he could come with him because once he reaches the hospital, the GPS can be his.
After some hesitation, Marc accepts. The duo finds some stairs that take them inside a church. While looking around, they find a lighter and a hip flask with alcohol still in it, so they use both things plus some wood to start a fire.
It seems the light has called someone's attention, because they hear some noises nearby, so they grab their spears and go investigate. What they find at the back of the church is quite a surprise: it's a bear, who quickly starts chasing after them. Marc is about to reach the sewer stairs when he notices Enrique has fallen and the bear is on him, so he decides to stay and help.
He pokes the animal with his spear to get him off Enrique, who rushes back to their bonfire and lights a torch to keep the bear at bay. This isn't enough, however, the bear is advancing and pushing them towards the doors that would take them outside, so Marc comes up with the plan: he asks Enrique to drop the torch, and when he does, the bear uses the chance to jump on him, so Marc receives him with his spear pointed at him, causing the bear to impale itself on it. Both men can't help laughing when they find a tag that says the bear comes from the Barcelona Zoo.
Moments later, they're eating the bear meat that they have roasted over the fire. Enrique thanks Marc for staying instead of escaping with the GPS and admits that before everything happened, he would've fired him even if he had finished the project on schedule. But this confession only makes them laugh again.
Enrique also admits that he's worried that without his father, nobody will notice if he dies, and there are some important things he still needs to talk to him about. In return, Marc tells him he told Julia he didn't want kids, but it wasn't entirely true: he was just scared he wouldn't be able to take care of and protect the kid, a fear that has only gotten worse in the current situation. Some hours later, they go back to the sewers and come across a family coming from the opposite direction.
One of them is hurt, so they tell them to go with them to the hospital, but they reply with bad news: rumors said the hospital Enrique's father was at has burned down. Freaking out, Enrique rushes into the nearest door and enters a building, where he climbs the stairs until he reaches a floor high enough to oversee the city and confirm the rumors: the hospital has indeed burned down. Feeling like he has nothing else to live for, Enrique breaks the window with a chair and gets ready to jump, but Marc pushes him back inside and tells him he needs him.
Enrique disagrees, so he gifts Marc the seeds for his future baby and tells him to leave. After going through the sewers again, Marc finally reaches the mall, which he enters through a parking lot filled with bodies. Ignoring the sensation of being followed, he rushes to Julia's shop, but he only finds the body of Andrea's mother.
Getting incredibly desperate, he looks through all the papers and notebooks, but he doesn't find any clues, so he throws it all on the ground with anger and cries until he notices something in the mirror. After cleaning away the dust, he finds a note from Andrea for her mother, saying they're stuck in the supermarket section of the mall. Marc hurries to that area, which has been barricaded so the people leaving upstairs can't come to steal food from them any longer.
The men guarding them threaten Marc with a bow, so he takes out a picture he brought from his apartment and explains he doesn't want trouble, he just wants to find his girlfriend. One of the men goes to the back to see if Julia is there with them, and while waiting, Marc sees some shadows moving behind him. Suddenly, a group of people that had been following him comes out, taking advantage of the distraction Marc has created to break into the market and fight for the food.
As both groups get into a violent confrontation, Marc enters the market as well and looks for Julia, but finds Andrea instead. She mentions the last day she saw Julia was before she went to the doctor and, after kicking off an incoming attacker, guides Marc towards a nearby exit. However, they get separated when a beam on fire falls from the ceiling between them, trapping Andrea between the flames and the outside world.
She opens the doors and Marc encourages her to go out, but she can't bring herself to do it and dies when more of the ceiling falls on top of her. Marc wastes no time and starts running in the opposite direction, only to be jumped on by one of the crazy raiders. He's about to be stabbed when suddenly, Enrique appears and pushes the guy away before helping Marc to stand up as he tells him he knew he'd still need him.
The attacker hasn't left though, and he quickly comes closer again to stab Enrique in the stomach. Enrique pushes him away again and is about to impale him with his spear when he notices it's just a kid, so he decides to spare him. Pretending his wound isn't a big deal and he's fine, Enrique tells Marc they should hurry out of the mall before the whole building collapses.
They cross the sewers once more until they find a hole in the ceiling that someone else dug, and when they climb inside it, they find themselves in a movie theatre. There's nobody around, so Marc approaches the glass door and sees that Julia's doctor's office is across the street. It's impossible for him to reach it like this though, because the tunnel is blocked.
Getting desperate, he goes upstairs and looks through the window, trying to see if he can find Julia inside the other building. It takes him a moment but he does end up seeing her, and when he does, he starts calling her name and hitting his window, hoping she'll see him as well. At first, it looks like she'll never turn around, but it seems Marc's tactic has a good effect because Julia suddenly turns and the couple finally sees each other again and cries with happiness.
Marc rushes downstairs to tell Enrique about Julia, only to find him sitting at the theatre bleeding out. He wants to look for something to bandage the wound up, but Enrique doesn't let him, claiming his time has come. His last words are a request for Marc to stop whining and cross the street to reunite with his family once and for all.
Enrique dies then, and Marc takes a moment to cry for him before following his advice. Both he and Julia make it to their respective doors, and after some hesitation, Enrique finally steps outside. He immediately starts feeling sick and dizzy, his ears start bleeding, and he has trouble walking.
But by keeping his eyes on Julia, he manages to continue even after falling, crawling the rest of the way as a bright white light becomes the only thing he can see around him. Suddenly, Julia's face appears above him, and as the light disperses, Marc realizes he's successfully crossed the street and made it to the building, finally reuniting with his beloved. The couple stays in that building and starts a new life there, collecting water from the rain and growing Enrique's seeds.
Their boy is born strong and healthy, and when he learns to walk, he goes outside on his own, proving the new generation isn't affected by the Panic. Many years later, a group of wandering teenagers shows up at their door, so Marc and Julia decide to let their son join them so he can have a chance to know what the outside world is like and perhaps have a chance to rebuild society from the scratch.
