Growing up, I despised tests, which probably speaks more to the way I studied, than anything else. Standardized, multiple choice and essays… schoolwork always felt like a chore, and it took me about 16 years to finally perfect my approach… just in time for college. It was really more of a memorization challenge that was always at odds with the amount of time I was allotted to recite it back. And then came the stress from it all.
Today, I don’t mind taking tests as much, but I also don’t have too many looming before me, which is a good thing. And when they magically appear out of thin air, say, while you’re watching a new movie, it can be a frustrating process — especially when you weren’t prepared at all!
With no jump scares and no traditional terrors, but plenty of existential crises, Alexander Ullom’s It Ends will absolutely test the will of modern horror audiences.
What begins as an everyday occurrence becomes something much sinister within a blink of an eye, one which nobody seems to recognize until it’s much too late.
Innocently enough, four friends load up into a Jeep Cherokee for a late-night food run. Tyler (portrayed by Mitchell Cole) mans the wheel of steel while Fisher (Noah Toth) and Day (Akira Jackson) endlessly debate memes while James (Phinehas Yoon) instigates more arguments. As you may assume, the banter takes center stage, while the crew is distracted from their navigation app. Unable to immediately find their destination, they turn around and find a dead end, instead.
Confused and somewhat irritated (along with being a little hangry), each character responds to the situation differently, but it takes encountering an angry mob to fully unite them. With no phone service, no radio signals and only a quarter tank of gas while being chased and attacked by people for an unknown reason, their only answer is to escape by staying on the road. Which leads to no where.
With a premise like that, something strange is going on… and I’m hooked. But it will take some strong writing and direction for me to deem this adventure a successful one… or not.
“How long do y’all think we can do this? Just sitting here, driving… all day?”
Brought to the big screen, in part, by a producer of Backrooms (courtesy of filmmaker Chris Ferguson), It Ends features a similar theme. If Backrooms is a psychological exploration of human failure and despair through an alternate reality, It Ends is a psychological test of suffering, mental strength and responding to unexpected problems that have no true solutions, only secondary dilemmas via a road trip.
As you might imagine, the patience, willpower and mental fortitude is challenged in each of the main characters. But what would you expect when you’re trapped on a road to nowhere, endlessly driving to no determined destination, while trying to survive the outrageous situation? No one can sleep, nobody’s hungry and the car doesn’t seem to ever run out of gas. Is this some sort of drug trip, death, afterlife or purgatory in between?
Those same obstacles are also challenged by the audience. Distributed by Neon with a tight runtime of 89 minutes, the psychological horror brought on by off-screen otherworldly terrors builds dread from conversations, silence and the slow erosion of four friendships — a subgenre coined “hangout horror” by the multi-hyphenate Ullom, who wrote, directed and edited the movie.
It’s all a test, but if you’re not expecting those elements, your opinion of the film most likely won’t be a positive one. How much are you willing to endure from a first-time independent horror filmmaker?
Deciphering clues to the story feels like pulling teeth while impatience among the characters (and the audience) builds quickly, as they construct new plans, but no answers arrive. Everyone’s mentally losing it. What if Ullom’s ultimate plan wasn’t originally intended to create a final destination for his unsuspecting crew, but he simply meant to torture the actors in order to get their responses? This very much feels like a strong possibility.
It Ends reminds me of the TV shows LOST and From, in a way, where the laws of science — as we know them — don’t seem to work at a specific location, and a reason for the disturbance is never truly given (or it eventually becomes an unnecessary detail). I was expecting more personal truths to be revealed by our cast of four, as they attempt to figure out their sins that may have led them to this position, but in the end, those never made a difference in the storyline. And that was a test failed by a first-time filmmaker.
Facing the same situation, of a never-ending sense of helplessness and dread combined with a tinge of homesickness, I’m really unsure that I would have done anything differently from these characters. But I do know that I wouldn’t have placed blind faith in a navigation app to save my life.
Again, it was all a test. And as a viewer, I failed it. But the title failed, too, as this long journey of pushing personal boundaries also reminds me of another feature film which wrongly describes its throughline: The NeverEnding Story.
“I can’t keep worrying about shit that don’t end.”