*Last Days Here* is about good people who love metal and go through hell.

Pellet attempts to manage Liebling, who isn't attempting to manage his addiction.

Last Days Hereis one of the few movies I’ve ever seen, documentary or otherwise, with a perfect happy ending that is equal parts happy/perfect and potentially tragic/tense. The premise of the film is familiar—an almost-was rock star who’s hit bottom and the few concerned parties whose belief in his talent make them push for his comeback—but if it’s familiar, it’s because it’s a reliably compelling documentary premise, especially when the star in question has fallen this low and his music has inspired such high levels of devotion.

When we meet Bobby Liebling, he’s a serious drug addict living in his parents’ basement, but to legions of dedicated metalheads out there, he’s the missing lead singer of the cult ‘70s band Pentagram. One of Pentagram’s most evangelical fans is Sean "Pellet" Pelletier, who happens to work at Philadelphia’s Relapse Records, one of the best indie metal labels in the US (who’ve released albums from Mastodon, Pig Destroyer, Baroness, and countless other metal bands that I gladly listen to on purpose).

Pelletier takes on the role of Liebling’s manager, which is usually as fruitless and frustrating as you can imagine working with a hardcore junkie would be, but he stays by his side through every high and low. Without spoiling anything, I can say that Pelletier’s devotion isn’t entirely in vain, but even as the film ends on an up-note, Liebling’s future still seems fairly fragile. Fortunately, that ambiguity only makes the film more compelling, since, by the film’s end, you’ve become one of Liebling’s supporters. Whether or not you like him, his music, or metal in general, the ups and downs of Last Days Here convince you that Pelletier is right, and Bobby Liebling is worth believing in.