‘It Ends’ Review – A Nightmarish Journey On The Road To Nowhere

One wrong turn. That is what puts the four friends of It Ends, Alexander Ullom’s directorial debut, literally on the road to nowhere. It’s a simplistic and atmospheric setup that is fueled by the inner fears of unending repetition. It’s a film that, much like the characters, makes you question your psyche and how you ended up there. Did they enter an alternate universe? Have they passed away without knowing it? Are they in some strange place between being asleep and being awake? There are no clear answers, and that’s what makes it a true existential nightmare. There are deeper questions at play here about life. Can you break the cycle, or are you doomed to repeat it? What becomes ultimately frightening about It Ends is that there are no clear answers about the aimlessness at play.

The beginning of the journey is pretty simple. Recent graduates, James (Phinehas Yoon), Day (Akira Jackson), and Fisher (Noah Toth), have been picked up by their friend Tyler (Mitchell Cole) after not having seen him for a year. As Tyler drives them down a dark, forested road, he struggles to find the turnoff, and he turns the car around only to find the road blocked by a wall of trees. Tyler is convinced this is the way they came in and it shouldn’t be blocked (the GPS also directed them this way), while the others believe maybe he made a wrong turn. As they argue over the directions, Tyler exits the vehicle and suddenly finds himself attacked by a horde of people who have emerged from the darkness. They swarm the car violently, with Fisher’s arms being viciously attacked in the process. As they stop to tend to Fisher’s wound, they are swarmed once again, and when they make a second escape, they soon realize that the road they’re on is seemingly endless.

The best decision made by Ullom is that there is a lack of exposition or explanation for what is happening. The audience is just as perplexed as the characters, and that makes one feel like they’re on this endless journey with them. There might be a desire by some to want to know why this is happening, but the lingering mystery is what builds up the dread. The four characters go through night and day over and over again, only to remain on the same straight road in an endless loop. Made for only $80,000, Ullom utilizes his budget to great effect. The darkness of night blankets the scenes with an atmospheric feeling of the unknown, while the daytime scenes, though beautifully shot, also hint at escalating tension. Ullom goes a long way by establishing a feeling and banking on the fear of the unknown

At a slim 89 minutes, Ullom keeps the film moving and simply immerses the audience in what the characters are experiencing. In that experience is how the audience learns about the characters, albeit only in the moment. There are no flashbacks to happier times or major exposition about how they became friends or past tensions. The audience learns about them in the moment, and that is enough to establish their personalities just enough to care about them. You learn that Tyler is the more practical one of the bunch, while Fisher and Day take moments as they come and are complacent in their comfort zones. James sets up deeper questions about their predicament and is the clear overachiever. When the others want to give up, he wants to keep going and search for answers, even if there is no guarantee he’ll find them. Each character is relatable in their own way and fiercely loyal, although their endless road trip will begin to question that loyalty and each character’s will to go on.

Even though the film doesn’t answer questions about where they have found themselves, it does make the audience come up with their own. The characters eventually learn they only have 90 seconds to explore the woods to see where they are before the mysterious people who inhabit them begin to charge them once again. The time is insufficient to go much further in the woods before they have to run back and drive away, doomed to repeat the process once again. The car never runs out of gas, and the four leads never require sustenance. You soon realize this isn’t a plot hole. They are existing in a space where time doesn’t matter. They may not require food because they could be dead or simply stuck in some kind of alternate reality where they don’t need the basics to survive. These little tidbits only add to the mystery and make the film all the more compelling.

All four leads, unfamiliar to me before this film, are excellent. You buy their youthful exuberance at the start of the film, and their banter indicates history that the film doesn’t have time to explore. Where they really begin to shine is as each of them gradually experiences a mental breakdown from their ordeal. Each performer attacks this in their own way, and each of them gets a moment to have a light shone on their talents. At the end of the day, Yoon, Toth, Jackson, and Cole put in excellent work and have exceptional careers ahead of them.

It Ends thrives on atmosphere and the fear of the unknown. In many ways, it all might be an existential metaphor for life’s uncertainties, especially for the Gen Z crowd, as adulthood seems like a scary notion after graduation. Will there be stability? Will you succeed? Is it worth it to keep going, or should you simply go with the flow? Waiting for these answers could stifle your growth and progress, making you feel like you are on a road to nowhere. When it’s all said and done, the scariest notion at the center of It Ends is life and the fear that you might just get some of it wrong along the way.

It Ends is now available on VOD.