Review: It Ends — Crooked Marquee

In its unnerving trailer, It Ends gets to boast that it’s “From the producer of Backrooms,” one of this year’s horror success stories at the box office. Yet while both films are very much a vibe, are set in liminal spaces, and were birthed out of the creepypasta phenomenon, It Ends bears little resemblance to Backrooms in what it’s actually trying to do—and what it will make its audience feel. This feature debut from writer-director Alex Ullom is more an unsettling dialogue-driven thriller than nightmare-fueling expedition into an uncanny maze. It provokes more thoughts than terror. That’s not a knock on It Ends, but it’s important to set audience expectations so they know what type of journey they’re about to go on.

It Ends has a pretty basic premise: four long-time friends make a wrong turn onto an isolated road, which simply never ends and never offers an exit. They keep going without ever getting hungry or running out of gas, but when they stop for more than 90 seconds, their Jeep Cherokee is soon attacked by people who spill out of the woods, begging for help. Ullom creates enough variation in the action (or lack of it) to keep the audience engaged. This is an achievement, given that the most hellish part of the ride isn’t the threats outside the car; it’s the unceasing boredom of spending almost every moment inside of it.

Ullom’s script gives just enough characterization to the four riders (who each take turns at the wheel) that they’re distinct, but we never really get to know them that well, despite the movie being mostly conversation between them instead of plot. There’s Tyler (Mitchell Cole), who served in the armed forces, but was never deployed, while the other three friends were at college: philosophizing James (Phinehas Yoon), dryly funny but dark Day (Akira Jackson), and easily panicked Fisher (Noah Toth). They’re all on the precipice of real adulthood, but they’re unsure of where they’re going or what they’re doing, lending itself to It Ends’ own existential questions. It starts off with easy ones, ripe for a road trip, Reddit, or a night out, but then it gets into something deeper as the road continues on and the foursome have exhausted all other conversation.

It Ends feels like it was made by someone who got a better grade in PHL 101 than I did (a low bar) with its eagerness to engage with ideas about the nature of life and existence, what it all means and why we’re here. The audience is trying to figure it out just as much as these characters are. It Ends is never as scary as horror fans might hope it would be, but it’s not aiming to be. It’s going for a low-level hum of anxiety, punctuated by a few frightening moments, but it’s mostly driven by the type of angst that feels especially prevalent in your twenties but can continue to plague you at other uncertain parts of your life. It feels like purgatory, with these four people unable to move on to the next thing, which seems to feel like even more of a struggle for Gen Z than for past cohorts at that age, given the cratering of the entry-level job market and a variety of complicating factors like COVID.

Directors of photography Evan Draper and Jazleana Jones create that sense of unease with close framing, both inside the small SUV and outside of it. There’s a sense of claustrophobia with the two-lane road penned in by thick woods. Shots are aimed at the sky, but there’s no expanse: just a tight canopy of trees on either side, limiting the view and the options for these four people. Draper and Jones utilize a nice dolly zoom or two, creating a feeling of discomfort and unreality while these characters attempt to figure out what the fuck is going on.

It Ends keeps it moving at a brisk 87 minutes, driving the movie toward an uncertain destination. Ullom hasn’t made the horror movie that its marketing might suggest, but he has created something more interesting than most low-budget debuts in the genre. It Ends engages with big ideas that are likely to resonate with anyone who has had moments of feeling out of control and unsure of where the road is taking them, a far more realistic fear than the ghosts, demons, and zombies that populate most horror movies.