*may contain brief spoilers*
Last Days is a story that follows a down-on-his-luck guerilla filmmaker Kyle Freeman and his partner Dan, who are commissioned to make a documentary about a cult from the 1970s called the Temple of the Last Days. As the duo uncover the mysteries of the cults implosion, they begin to realise they have gotten themselves involved in something much darker, with ghosts of the cults past threatening to ruin their film… and their sanity.
The first thing I have to get off my chest about this book is just how much of an evil aura it has about it. The author does a brilliant job at placing you in the shoes of our main character Kyle, as it genuinely feels like you’re reading something you shouldn’t be, and going through the descent into sort-of-madness and delirium as him. Kyle’s character is one that feels quite easy to root for and connect with; he makes some flawed choices but through his struggles it’s easy to see where he’s coming from and that goes a long way at maintaining reader’s interest.
Last Days is a long book, clocking in at around 531 pages, and I think Adam Nevill makes good use of that length. This is a very lore-heavy story. There is a lot of detail put into the history and backstory of the cult, and it even goes further back than that. The considerable amount of information is often given to us through the interviews Kyle and Dan conducted with people associated with the cult, which results in some pretty dense chapters which could be a slog for some. Personally, I found this absolutely fascinating. Nevill’s attention to detail is really impressive and I do think it helps create that bond between you and the fictional cult, allowing for that malevolent feeling to persist.
On top of this, Nevill is incredibly effective at creating tension. There were so many points that I found myself holding my breath or clenching my muscles with anxiety, and as someone who is quite desensitised to horror, this kind of blew me away. Almost any scene in which one of our characters is faced with the Blood Friends, particularly Kyle’s numerous isolated confrontation, had me on the edge of my seat. The way the author describes the entities themselves is chilling. You get enough to have a general idea of their appearance, but it leaves enough to the imagination to also create that fear of the unknown that terrifies us so much.
When it comes to horror in this vein, with a mystery and genuinely terrifying storytelling, it can be very difficult to create a payoff that doesn’t disappoint the reader — whatever the reader has in their head is often much scarier than the reality. However, Last Days is one of the only pieces of media that I have found is able to present you with the whole picture and maintain the horror in it. What we get of an explanation for the entities, the truth behind the demise of the cult and how that connects to present day was very satisfying to me.
However, I cannot deny that the last 10% of the book was a minor letdown. As someone who was entranced by the mystery and the lore, I found the action-adventure style set piece finale to be a strange turn. The idea that a methodical horror mystery ends in three guys shooting handguns at these entities was a step too far for me personally, I would’ve much preferred something a bit more subtle and fitting of the slow-burn it followed.
I think I knew I would be giving this book 5 stars within a couple hundred pages — it would’ve taken a lot to destroy the genuine terror I felt in some of those early scenes. Although I think the final confrontation could’ve been a little stronger, I liked the last couple of pages concluding Kyle’s story, and it definitely doesn’t deter me from immediately categorising Adam Nevill’s Last Days as an absolute triumph of horror fiction and an instant favourite of mine.
