The Last Sunrise
Sun-drenched beaches, a meet-cute involving spilled coffee or a wrong turn on a scooter, and a soundtrack that makes you want to book a flight to any destination with nice olive oil are typical summer romance checklists. The Last Sunrise fulfills all of those requirements, and as it is an adaptation of Anna Todd, it also gives you a subplot about a terminal illness and a property dispute that could serve as an HGTV pilot. Prime Video just dropped the official trailer, and honestly? We came for the romance and stayed for the real estate drama. We had no idea that this would also be a land rights narrative.
Now let’s get started.
Talk on The Last Sunrise’s Plot
Anna Todd is another writer whose name you might have heard before as she was the brain behind the After book series, which made the “brooding bad boy with a heart of gold” into an entire universe on screen. The Last Sunrise is based on her bestselling novel of the same name. In this case, the cliffs of Mallorca replace the campus setting, and the “brooding” is replaced with “actively falling in love while everything around them slowly catches fire.”
In theory, the plot is rather simple: Ry (Maia Reficco), a college student suffering from an ongoing illness, goes on vacation to Mallorca with her mother, Isolde (Eva Longoria), which is supposed to be a relaxing and peaceful holiday experience. You know, sea air, vitamin D, maybe a nice paella. Instead, Ry meets Julián (Fernando Lindez), a charismatic local, and within what appears to be one trailer’s worth of montages, she is fully, embarrassingly, cinematically in love.
Naturally, nothing can just be nice. As Ry leans into her “live every moment” era, her condition worsens, long-buried family secrets start crawling out of the woodwork, and in a twist nobody’s mother saw coming Isolde’s plans to build a hotel on the island turn out to be tangled up in Julián’s own family history. Somebody really said “let’s make the love interest AND the real estate deal complicated,” and honestly, respect for the ambition.
Meet the People Performing the Emotionally Difficult Work in The Last Sunrise Cast
Maia Reficco plays Ry, the central character.In case you recognize her name, that’s because she was part of Broadway show Hadestown where she played the character of Eurydice, a story about someone fighting against death and falling in love. Method casting? We’re not sure. All we’re saying is that the universe is funny.
Fernando Lindez plays Julián, the love interest whose entire personality in the trailer is “effortlessly charming Mallorca local who probably smells like sea salt and better decisions.” He’s giving off big “reason to extend your vacation indefinitely” energy, and the trailer knows exactly what it’s doing every time it cuts to his face.
Eva Longoria rounds things out as Isolde, Ry’s mother, who spends the trailer being simultaneously protective, suspicious, and extremely invested in hotel zoning laws. Her now-viral trailer line, which basically asks if her daughter is seeing “a Garcia,” has the same impact as a mother learning that her child is seeing someone from a competing family business. Imagine Romeo and Juliet, but instead of centuries of blood, the conflict is over a boutique resort.
The Last Sunrise Trailer Breakdown, Beat by Beat
The trailer opens exactly how you’d expect: golden light, ocean waves, Ry looking like she’s about to have the best summer of her life. “One summer can change everything,” the voiceover promises, which is either a beautiful sentiment or a legal disclaimer, depending on how the third act goes.
Then Julián shows up, the chemistry does its thing, and for about forty-five seconds, the movie is just two attractive people falling for each other on a Spanish island, which, sure, we’ll allow it. But then the cracks start showing. Isolde’s hotel ambitions collide with the inconvenient fact that Julián’s family owns some of the most valuable land on the island — land she needs in order to build. The ethereal soundtrack abruptly becomes a little more sinister, the cuts quicken, and we are reminded that Ry’s health is also subtly deteriorating like the saddest hourglass in the world.
A forbidden-like romance, a mother-daughter conflict, a family secret that goes beyond “we don’t like the Garcias,” and a health issue that could destroy the whole lovely mess are all present at the conclusion. It’s a lot of plates spinning for one 106-minute runtime, but if the trailer is any indication, the film is betting that Reficco and Lindez have enough chemistry to keep every plate airborne.
Why Is the Last Sunrise Trailer Already Trending?
A few reasons this trailer is already making the rounds:
First, Anna Todd’s fanbase is enormous. The After books alone have sold over 12 million copies worldwide, and her name attached to a project is basically a built-in opening weekend. Second, the “chronic illness plus summer romance” formula has a proven track record of making audiences cry in public, which, say what you will, is a good marketing strategy. And third, Eva Longoria playing a mother willing to go to business war over a hotel deal is exactly the kind of unhinged parental energy that turns a supporting role into a scene-stealer.
Casting an actress who portrayed a doomed Broadway heroine as a woman in a race against time to live fully before it’s too late also has an almost ironic quality. It’s the kind of detail that movie Twitter (sorry, movie X) won’t let go of, whether it was a happy accident or deliberate casting.
The Final Sunrise Prime Video’s Release Date and Opinion
The Last Sunrise appears to be targeting the same crowd that produced movies like Me Before You and The Fault in Our Stars box office and box office hits, based only on the trailer. It has the images, the chemistry, the heartbreaking idea, and a filmmaker in Carlson Young who is adept in handling emotionally charged content. We won’t know until the entire movie is out if the hotel subplot turns out to be a legitimately tense problem or just a strange diversion into zoning law.
In any case, make sure to put The Last Sunrise on your calendars since it will begin streaming globally on Prime Video on August 26. Bring tissues. Maybe also bring a notepad, in case you need to take notes on how to negotiate a hotel land deal you never know when it’ll come in handy.
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