Los Últimos Días (2013)

Dir. David Pastor, Àlex Pastor

“A mysterious epidemic spreads across the planet. Humanity develops an irrational fear of open spaces that causes instant death. Soon, the world population is trapped inside buildings. As Barcelona descends into chaos, Marc sets off on a quest to find Julia, his missing girlfriend, without ever going outside.”

This is a nice piece of Spanish sci-fi, the best I’ve seen since Nacho Vigalondo’s excellent Extraterrestre in 2011. It’s an interesting spin on the regular “end of the world” scenario because everything is shot inside buildings or underground making for some really great, fresh looking cinematography for the genre that is so often saturated with the wide open spaces and highways we often see in many American films. Even the Pastor brothers previous, and first, feature film Carriers from 2009 is exactly like that, but I’m quite happy to say that Los Últimos Días is much, much better than Carriers.

It focuses on two people rather than the usual groups we’re used to seeing, which is great, there’s plenty of room for development between the two as they don’t exactly start out on great terms, something which is made obvious thanks to flashback scenes. They both have their own motives for leaving the building, particularly Marc’s relationship with Julia, which is central to the story and getting back to her after being trapped in his office building for months is the main driving force for this unlikely pairing.

At the moment Los Últimos Días is available on US Netflix so do give it a watch if you have the chance ☺