IT ENDS Review (Letterboxd Video Store)

The Letterboxd video store is live and with it came a handful of festival darlings which, without distribution deals, were destined to fall between the cracks. The only English language film of the bunch, Alexander Ullom’s It Ends serves as an excellent example of just what this selection of movies stand for. That being the type of movie you watch debut with a hushed audience in South by Southwest’s Paramount Theater or Telluride Colorado’s ice rink: thrilled to dissect with other festival goers between discussions of Hamnet, Frankenstein, Anora, The Brutalist, or whatever films are pre-destined to be awards contenders that year. This is not a disparaging remark for It Ends. It’s quite the opposite. The small independent films that live and die at the festival are in many ways a great festival’s lifeblood. It Ends is just such a film.

Following their college graduation, three friends and their ex-military peer are moving out of college life and into “the real world.” They quickly find that the real world is really terrifying. It Ends is far from the first film to tackle post-graduation nihilism with characters who drift hopelessly from one situation to the next. It is the first to literalize this drifting on an (almost) never ending road. Post graduation there is no more hand holding. You have your career plans, your wits, your friends… and your car. In fact, aside from those friends (those who you are eager to experience new and exciting aspects of life with), everyone else is nefarious background. They are obstacles who want your car and will tear you apart to get it. Scenes where hordes of people flock from the woods screaming for help and violently attacking the travelers’ Jeep are shot in such a chaotic way that it is often difficult to discern any specific action aside from feelings of abject fear and discomfort.

As the road continues, these incredibly tense moments of fear fade away along with the people who chase the car. The movie which up until about half-way through its runtime is a clean-cut indie horror flick pivots. Suddenly, the nihilistic fear is replaced with nihilistic boredom. This boredom is not felt by the viewer, but by the characters. Life on the road is normalized. The film slows and as each traveler decides to give up on the road, the viewer is left to wonder if it does in fact end. This is the most engaging aspect of the film: how far will each passenger travel before they find their end? For blue collar Tyler (Mitchell Cole) the answer is not very far. If the road is a metaphor for “real life,” Tyler, having served in the military and found work without a college degree has been traveling for years prior to the film. Meanwhile, Day (Akira Jackson) and Fisher (Noah Toth) manage to travel for a great distance. Having eventually found contentedness in their own relationship they depart from the car and end their journey. This leaves James (Phinehas Yoon) to travel the road alone. Yoon is tasked with carrying the film, alone in a Jeep, for a substantial portion of the runtime. It is a harrowing performance to say the least. Moments of physical catharsis and prolonged instances of extreme boredom are portrayed with an upsetting degree of commitment. Each character’s departure from the Jeep at their own chosen time is likely what many viewers will be thinking about after the credits roll. Was Tyler right for slipping away so early in the journey? Is Day and Fisher’s companionship more valuable than James’ need to find the end or purpose on the road? The beauty of It Ends is that everyone, depending on the stage of life they are in, will likely find different meanings in the movie and relate to it in different ways. Still, Ullom’s focus on James, the traveler who does find the end, suggests a certain value in the drive to keep pushing through life, a drive that such a young filmmaker must carry to make it in such a cutthroat and often hopeless industry.

The Verdict:

It Ends is independent filmmaking at its finest. The content of film itself is fairly one note, focusing on post-graduation nihilism and the desire (or lack thereof) to find purpose. Still, this is a film shot largely during a global pandemic, on a university campus, and it’s a film that used Instagram as a source for locating talent. Despite its young direction, it is shot beautifully, sounds incredible, and written with an intentional and effective balance of humor and fear. In a world full of A24 horror films “about trauma” and Neon’s penchant for picking up international and critically acclaimed awards contenders, an app like Letterboxd is primed to pick up the pieces - granting cinephiles who yearn for the weird, the low-budget, and the entirely unique a place to rent the independent films that might otherwise fall between the cracks.

🍿 SCORE = 80 / 100