It Ends will be released in select theaters on Friday, August 21, and enters wide release on August 28.
Remember that Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere”? It stars with these lyrics: “Well, we know where we’re going / But we don’t know where we’ve been” and “We’re not little children / And we know what we want / And the future is certain / Give us time to work it out”…
It seems that David Byrne’s words are firmly entrenched in the minds of the team behind It Ends, the latest indie-horror-thriller-that-could, with its tale of a quartet of friends whose car trip turns into an existential joy ride on a never-ending road… a road to nowhere, you might say.
Written and directed (and edited) by newcomer Alexander Ullom, It Ends isn’t as outwardly cheery as the Talking Heads song sounds – it is a horror film after all – but it can be fun all the same. The four leads (Phinehas Yoon as James, Akira Jackson as Day, Noah Toth as Fisher, and Mitchell Cole as Tyler) have a playful banter that carries much of the film, particularly in its opening stretch where they innocently happen into what in another decade might’ve been an episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (or a Sartre play): The turn on the road they’re on never comes, and the group slowly realize they’re trapped on a paved nightmare, where if they dare stop the car for too long, raving maniacs emerge from the surrounding woods and engulf them. Their only choice? Drive, baby, drive. To continue the song analogies, these people may be on the road to purgatory, and they sure don’t like the sound of that…
One question that always surrounds these tight-quarters movies is whether or not things can stay interesting, despite the film being set in one place. But rather than being limited by it, It Ends instead benefits from its contained setting. The first 15 minutes or so of It Ends are almost entirely shot in close-ups and two-shots of the cast inside the car as they chitter-chatter, happy to be reunited (Tyler hasn’t been on the scene recently but is back now that the other three are graduating from college). Even as the situation grows more concerning in that opening – where the heck is the exit off this road!? – Ullom’s camera remains restrained. The dude knows he’s got 90 minutes of movie to play out in this car and on the road outside it, and no place else, and he squeezes every bit that he can out of those settings. By the time Tyler and James exit to investigate the woods, the car’s flashing hazard lights cast an intermittent red glow where… wait… is that a face out there…? Did something just move behind that tree? And then BAM: The masses of lost souls or ghouls or whatever they are are upon our characters.
And that’s the thing about It Ends: The script allows for the characters to ask the same questions we’re asking while watching. These people who are appearing from out of the forest in a mania to overtake the car, begging to be let in, they’ve gotta be dead, right? Ghosts or shades of the living? Which means James and Tyler and Day and Fisher… well, maybe they’re dead too? Are they being punished for something they did in their “real” lives? The question is asked: Who in this car recently did something very, very bad, requiring karmic payback!? Speak up now!
So the questions and theories about what’s going on here are floated, particularly by James, the most driven and analytical of the group. But answers are a different story. Eventually the group settles into a sort of normalcy about their situation, driving and driving and driving. For a time, anyway.
Is the film about the road everyone finds themselves on as they enter adulthood? It Ends starts with the four talking about what’s next for them now that school is in the rearview mirror (if you will). Tyler, who’s already out in the real world as a working man, doesn’t seem particularly happy or satisfied with where life has taken him. James has given it all a lot of thought, and even has a job – and a selfie in his “first communion” work clothes – to prove it, but he doesn’t seem to be very happy either. Day’s living back home, and Fisher… is he just along for the ride? If he even has a plan for what’s next, I missed it.
Amid it all, these Gen Z kids are just hanging – yes, this is a hangout movie – and that’s a huge part of the appeal of the characters, and the film itself. Ullom has said he was partly inspired by Richard Linklater’s Slacker when making It Ends, and it shows, whether the group are debating who would win, a man with a gun or a man with 50 hawks, or contending with the monotony of living together in a car for weeks on end. (It must also be noted that Ullom shot most of this film on a mini Volume LED stage at his alma mater, Florida State, which is damned impressive.)
While never explicit in its intent, the film’s message is hard to shake. These four are trying to find their way in life, and as each comes to react to their situation in different ways, their fates seem to become increasingly sealed. And what is life in the real world if not a constant push to move forward? Do better, make more, get more, get there. Those people clawing at you as you pull away? Ignore them, they’re in the way, they’re the competition. Look, it’s a helluva job market out there, and I don’t make the rules – I just follow them. Talk about a horror show.
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