It Ends – Movie Review
Premiering at the 2025 South by Southwest Festival, and serving as one of the inaugural films for the launch of the Letterboxd Video Store, Alexander Ullom’s feature film debut, the existential thriller It Ends, has had an equally interesting and lengthy journey to the big screen as the characters in the film. Using Letterboxd’s digital film service – which started as a home for unreleased independent films without a distributor attached – It Ends became acquired by arthouse label Neon, who have backed the already critically acclaimed film for a cinematic release, giving audiences an even more immersive chance to experience the inescapable dread that Ullom’s movie has on offer.
It Ends begins in a car carrying four friends and recent graduates who are going on a road trip. Their conversations range from which animals would they be able to beat in a fight, meme culture, to navigating their feelings about the looming giant that is the world after school. As the car travels through the night down a forest road, it soon becomes apparent that this road will never end, with no exits and no ability to turn around back the way they came. After stopping to decide their next moves, the group are attacked by random, ravenous people who emerge from the forest, forcing them to remain in the car, driving the endless road, descending into an existential nightmare as each mile and day passes by.
Allegorical horror is thriving in the 21st century. That’s not to mean that the horror flicks of the 70s, 80s, and beyond weren’t some form of commentary on society or reaction to the state of the world. But it is very apparent that so many themes are hiding within the terror in such intricate and unique ways. Alexander Ullom’s script here does a great job of examining the terror that is palpably happening during this road trip from hell, but also the existential nightmare that is occurring within the minds of these young people during a heavy and daunting transitional moment in their lives.
That all comes through Ullom’s dialogue, which is very finely tapped into Gen-Z culture without being too “social media-y”. The four friends – James (Phineas Yoon), Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth), and Tyler (Mitchell Cole) – all converse with each other in the spirited way young adults do. They passionately defend their stances, voice their opinions, and offer lots of unsolicited advice. It’s impossible to not be seen in some way by the way Ullom has constructed these characters and their varying dynamics, and the performances do a fantastically authentic job in bringing that feeling to life, especially considering this film is a predominantly dialogue driven story.
But it’s the vulnerability that turns into fear that turns into pure existential dread as these characters realise that their fears of what the next steps in life may be don’t matter anymore when the soul focus becomes this inescapable road. The road is literally trapping these characters, but the road is also the predetermined paths that family, society, and friends incidentally form through their experiences and opinions that people often struggle to find their own exit from in life. As much as that fear propels the story, it also fuels the drama that is at the core of the film.
It Ends is also a thriller-mystery film, with its literal plot creating many moments of tension and uncertainty to stack on the emotional horror. Ullom rarely takes the film outside of the car, creating a real claustrophobic nature to the film (another allegorical visual to enhance the characters feeling trapped). The singular forest road becomes exhaustingly repetitive as another immersive way to make the audience also feel like they need to escape. And there are some solid scares that emerge from the depths of the endless forest that heighten the horror sentiment that It Ends sets its foundations on. As the story unfolds, and the group attempt to figure out the how, why, and what is this inescapable situation, Ullom shows great restraint in not revealing too much or injecting unnecessary lore, leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions about how terrifying this ordeal really is.
Even at 90-minutes, there are moments where the film can drag. It does feel like those moments are victims of the repetitive nature of the story, and being a predominantly dialogue driven movie, there is a lack of relentlessness that traditionally comes with the thriller genre. But, the moments that stick out as slightly dull feel more like rehashes of the emotional elements that don’t necessarily progress the story.
It Ends is a bold debut feature film from Alexander Ullom that attempts to make a dialogue driven, existential horror film as interesting and momentum filled as possible. And with a solid exploration of the transition from adolescence into adulthood, a decent mystery, and strong performances, Ullom achieves that for the most part.
It Ends is in Australian cinemas September 3
