There are few things more terrifying in life than the moment when you realize you’re officially an adult and that there’s no turning back. Maybe it’s the realization that there’s no longer a clearly defined path ahead of you for one reason or another, or perhaps it’s just the creeping understanding that the decisions you make now can and will shape the rest of your life. The future is suddenly less about endless possibilities and more about consequences, responsibilities, and the uncomfortable knowledge that there’s no guarantee any of it will even mean anything. In a remarkable debut, filmmaker Alexander Ullom’s It Ends takes that very specific existential anxiety and turns it into one of the most profound horror movies of the year.
The premise is enticing in its simplicity. Four friends take off on a road trip following college graduation, with Tyler (Mitchell Cole) behind the wheel alongside James (Phinehas Yoon), Day (Akira Jackson), and Fisher (Noah Toth). Ullom and the cast do a fantastic job establishing the dynamic between this group almost immediately. Tyler is the responsible one, already working for an HVAC company and carrying himself with the weariness of someone who has already begun settling into the unrewarding repetitiveness of adulthood. He’s also a former member of the military as opposed to his college buddies, giving him a level of maturity that contrasts nicely with the others. James and Fisher are best friends who are constantly cutting up, while the levelheaded Day seems unsure about what exactly she wants to do with her post-school life.
It’s a wonderfully lived-in quartet, with the kind of chemistry that makes you believe these people have genuinely known each other for years. Their conversations and jokes feel natural, their little tensions feel authentic, and when James remarks that “real life seems like it sucks ass,” it lands exactly as it should because It Ends understands precisely what he means. Before too long, Tyler realizes something is wrong.
The road they’re driving down simply doesn’t end. When they try to turn around, they discover they can’t go back. And should they dare to stop the car, something horrific comes charging out of the surrounding woods towards them - no matter how far they get. One of the film’s earliest sequences involving this best-left-unspoiled threat is genuinely, viscerally terrifying, with Ullom building tension beautifully before exploding into absolute chaos. While It Ends is ultimately more of a cerebral, existential type of horror movie, scenes like these will still give audiences the classic kind of scares to great effect.
It Ends is a wonderfully Twilight Zone-esque thought experiment brought to feature length. The group cannot turn the car off because they have no idea if it will start again. Their gas never runs out. Their phones have no signal but also don’t run out of battery. They don’t get hungry, thirsty, or tired - but they certainly can get bored. Days become weeks and weeks become months and eventually something much more frightening than the threat emerging from the woods begins to settle in: endless monotony.
This is where the film makes its smartest pivot. What initially appears to be a straightforward survival scenario gradually transforms into an anxious meditation on what it means to continue living when you have no idea where you’re going or whether there’s even any point to the journey at all. The group begins testing the rules of their apparent purgatory, establishing designated times to scream, vent, listen to music, explore the woods, and otherwise keep themselves stimulated. Eventually, survival becomes less about escaping the road and more about avoiding the gaping jaws of drudgery and despair.
Tyler has a line, “I’m not living my life in 90 second breaks,” and it’s likely the film’s most poignant summation of its entire thesis. The road becomes a uniquely horrifying interpretation of the tediousness and futility that adulthood can sometimes seem to promise. The film’s supernatural nightmare gradually turns into something much more universal, as the group goes back and forth between hope for some sort of actual escape or catharsis and woeful resignation over this being their fate indefinitely.
Yet, for all of its bleakness, It Ends is surprisingly moving in the way it rolls its philosophical ideas forward. Its existential dread ultimately becomes a question of what we do with the life we’ve been given and, more importantly, who we choose to spend it with. The four performances are excellent across the board, but Phinehas Yoon becomes particularly impressive as James gradually takes center stage as the film progresses, revealing layers that weren’t immediately apparent beneath his guarded, pessimistic exterior.
Ullom’s thrilling microbudget debut is deeply reflective, occasionally hilarious, and genuinely terrifying. But most importantly, it understands that sometimes the scariest thing imaginable isn’t death. It’s the possibility of living forever without knowing why you’re moving forward. And maybe growing up is realizing that you don’t need to know. Sometimes you just need to keep driving.
‘It Ends’ is now playing in theaters.
