The crafty but ultimately disappointing “It Ends,” which just premiered at SXSW, takes a familiar experience and throws into a cleverly existential horror premise: What if you were driving on a deserted, tree-lined road in the middle of the night — an already eerie scenario that plenty of filmmakers have used to freak people out — but the road just never ended? What if you just kept going and going for thousands of miles?
There are moments throughout Alexander Ullom’s debut feature that are genuinely unnerving, as four 20-somethings try to figure out just what the hell is going on from the confines of their white Jeep. Ullom uses the car’s features to his advantage, mining the uncomfortable glow of flashing hazard lights and the incessant beeping of an open door, for tension.
But while the movie is often cleverly spooky, it falls short in finding meaning in its fun gimmick of a setup. By the time “It Ends,” well, ends, you end up wondering: So, that’s it? What once felt fruitful just becomes set up for a gotcha punchline that seems to laugh in the face of anyone actually invested in the story.
For a while though, “It Ends” is a fun ride. It opens from what is essentially the perspective of the vehicle where nearly all the action will take place, establishing the SUV as an almost sentient figure. Four pals climb into it. There’s the driver (Mitchell Cole), a taciturn dude with a thick Southern accent who spent some time in the military. He’s chauffeuring James (Phinehas Yoon), a cynic about to start a boring job, Day (Akira Jackson), a graphic design major uncertain about her future, and the goofy Fisher (Noah Toth). They are all old friends on the cusp of entering the real world. Post-grad malaise is a key theme here, as their trip soon comes to represent the what am I doing with my life fears of many in that age range.
Ullom, I suspect, is purposely coy about just where they are all going, because the destination ends up not really being the point. Day uses her phone to navigate from the backseat when she tells Tyler to take a turn that will eventually lead to a highway. But the highway never comes, the map stays fixed on the two lane stretch, and slowly they all realize something is very wrong. Their conversations turn from the kind of surface-level banter you have with high school buddies into genuine terror.
These early moments of confusion are where Ullom’s filmmaking is at its flashiest and most exciting. We are with James as he peers out into the tree lined woods, seeing something move in the flashes of red light coming from the briefly stopped car. The fear is palpable as you try to discern just what kind of movie these four pals are in: Is it a zombie flick? Or something else?
But the set up for “It Ends” also becomes its Achilles’ Heel. The group quickly comes to understand that in order to stay alive they must keep their car on and keep driving. Obvious questions that situation elicits are explained away with a proverbial wave of the hand: Staying on the road means they never get hungry or tired. (They also never seem to have to go to the bathroom, which is not addressed, but something I thought about.) They can take brief breaks that they time on their phones, which seem to never lose power even though they get internet service.
The rules of the journey are both simple but sometimes mean that you, as a viewer, are trying to find the holes whatever supernatural curse has descended upon the protagonists. (Can’t their phones play music? Or do college kids not download music to their phones anymore?)
It also results in a monotony that Ullom can’t quite overcome. Yes, the repetitive nature of this adventure is sort of the point in this Gen Z “No Exit,” but eventually it starts to weigh the plot down and you long for some sort of revelation. Sartre, this is not.
The characters simply aren’t developed enough to make their slow unraveling all that captivating. Ullom does the work of establishing their banter, but not their deeper relationships. Despite some moments of confession we never really get a great sense of who these people were before their ordeal or what they mean to each other. Yoon gets the most to do as James becomes more and more obsessed with figuring it all out while his companions have resigned themselves to their fate, and yet he remains entirely defined by his circumstances in a way that makes him more representative than human.
As “It Ends” draws to its conclusion it starts to naggingly feel like an experiment that bleeds into a little bit of a “fuck you” to its audience. There’s an intriguing nihilistic streak to the whole affair, but what comes before isn’t funny or insightful enough to warrant what is ultimately served up. It’s just sort of a joke on you for caring. And maybe that’s what the youth are al about.
Grade: B-
“It Ends” premiered at SXSW 2025. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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