ROBLOX. VIDEO GAMES. MOVIES. ORIGINAL ANIMATIONS.
CLAY TRIBUNE.
Advertisement

Romance Runs Aground on a Single Strong Idea in The Last Sunrise

The Last Sunrise, Amazon's adaptation of Anna Todd's 2025 novel, stars Maia Reficco as a dancer with epilepsy. Streaming August 26, 2026 on Prime Video.

By mitch·3 min read
A man and woman stand together amid ruin, awaiting the coming of night.

Amazon’s adaptation of Anna Todd’s 2025 novel arrives with a tagline that promises everything: “One summer to feel everything.” The Last Sunrise, directed by Carlson Young from a script by Anna Klassen, runs 107 minutes and lands on Prime Video on August 26, 2026. It is a romance about a dancer who cannot trust her own body, and it is at its best when it stops trying to be anything else.

Trailer, via Prime Video.

Ry Pera and the Island That Rearranges Her

Maia Reficco plays Oriah “Ry” Pera, a Houston-based professional dancer in her twenties who collapses mid-performance. Her mother Isolde, played by Eva Longoria, gets her to a hospital, where doctors explain that Ry’s Tuberous Sclerosis Complex has caused epilepsy. They push for surgery to remove the cortical tubers in her brain. Ry refuses, afraid of the memory loss the operation could bring, and chooses medication instead — doses several times a day, with side effects she describes as numbness to the world.

Advertisement

Then Isolde’s work takes them to Mallorca, her native island. On the private jet she warns Ry about her pills, and about alcohol and drugs working against them. At the hotel, Ry meets Amara (Chloé Sweetlove), a receptionist her own age who points her toward the island’s possibilities.

Julian Garcia, the Beach, and the Moped

Amara sends Ry to a secluded beach that turns out to be nude. A young man approaches; Ry leaves, uncomfortable. She runs into him again while hunting for a phone charger, and he walks her back to the hotel, where he points out that the grass is treated with chemicals that pollute the water and hurt local fishermen.

That young man is Julian Garcia, played by Fernando Líndez. Ry goes clubbing with Amara and her friends, skips her medication beforehand, takes shots, nearly passes out, and ends up on the back of Julian’s moped.

What the Summer Actually Costs

The film’s structure is plain:

  • A collapse in Houston
  • A diagnosis and a refused surgery
  • A flight to Mallorca
  • A friendship with Amara
  • A romance with Julian
  • A worsening condition

Long-hidden family secrets surface as Ry’s health declines, and the life she has started building is threatened before summer ends.

A Release Built for Streaming, Not Theaters

Date Event
2025 Anna Todd’s novel published
August 26, 2026 The Last Sunrise debuts on Amazon Prime Video
107 minutes Runtime

Where the Film Lands

The Last Sunrise works when it treats Ry’s illness as a daily negotiation rather than a plot device. Reficco carries the collapse and the refusal with real weight, and Longoria’s Isolde reads as a mother whose control comes from fear, not cruelty. The Mallorca setting does the rest.

What drags is the machinery around them. The nude-beach mix-up and the charger errand are thin ways to engineer a meeting, and the family-secrets turn arrives late enough to feel like a second film bolted onto the first. The medication decision — Ry going off her pills before a night out — is the sharpest thing in the script, and the movie never quite reckons with it.

It is a decent romance with one genuinely good idea. 6.7 of 10.

The Notebook

Get the Notebook.

The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.

We send one note to confirm. Every issue has a one-click way out.

Film reviews
Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

As an Amazon Associate, Clay Tribune earns from qualifying purchases.