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The Unforgiving, Existential Dread of It Ends

As the credits roll on It Ends, you realize how clever a title that actually is. There is some foreshadowing in it and some reassurance, tied in with both the plot of the movie and the existentialism it evokes. It is a horror film about deeper more uncertain fears than we are used to seeing, at least in this format. It is almost like a film equivalent of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or Sartre’s No Exit -repackaged for a Gen-Z sensibility. And it is uniquely unsettling in that. What conventional modes of horror it does engage with, and only out of some logistical necessity, takes a backseat to the unexplainable psychological torment it subjects its characters to.
It is a remarkable debut feature from Alexander Ullom that got a limited VOD release late last year via the Letterboxd Video Store of all things. A perfect choice perhaps, this does feel made for a Letterboxd audience. Fortunately that didn’t preclude a theatrical run, and once its time on Letterboxd was up, Neon managed to acquire it. The movie plays better in the theatre, where you, like the characters, are restricted to a single space without distraction, where the monotony of the woods out four car windows is reflected by the dark and mundane theatre walls. It is a particularly immersive experience, forcing you to contend with the film’s frightful hypothesis.
The movie begins with four friends getting into a car. James (Phinehas Yoon), Day (Akira Jackson), and Fisher (Noah Toth) are recent college grads reuniting with their high school friend Tyler (Mitchell Cole) to help move him into a dorm. The day finished, they simply go out to grab some food following a GPS down a forested highway out of town. As the other three talk about various inane things, Tyler becomes concerned about how long they have been driving without either arriving at their destination or coming across an exit. Eventually he decides to turn around and drive back only to find the road has suddenly been blocked by woods. Stopping the car to investigate, they are soon swarmed by a horde of feral people coming out of the woods. With no other choice, they continue driving, confused and horrified as the road continues on with no end in sight.
Ullom considers the very things his audience is sure to think about with regards to a premise like this. It is established not long after this first episode that the fuel metre is frozen and that no matter how many miles they accumulate, the car -a somewhat cramped white hatchback- never runs out of gas. Further, they themselves realize they don’t feel either tired or hungry after so long on the road. Naturally they openly speculate about where they are or what has happened to them. And there is an engaging naturalism about this, Ullom's script very good at capturing the voices of these kinds of young people trapped in an impossible situation. James especially, being a philosophy student, is quick to bring up death and purgatory as options for their predicament; a curse perhaps for something bad one of them had done (while excusing himself from that responsibility curiously), or a cosmic test as in something out of Dante or Milton that must have an end eventually and some meaning behind it. 
Of course it is unclear that there is one -a horrifying thought that James refuses to entertain; but the four keep driving through days and nights, stopping at ninety second intervals (this being how long it takes for the horde to materialize) in order to switch drivers and assess what little they can. Seeking an explanation soon becomes futile and the question on both the characters' minds and the audience's is how long can they endure? It is an old hypothetical prospect, but the film gives it weight and relevance. How much monotony can a person withstand, how much uncertainty? The pressure through these characters is tangible -whether in the weary frustration of Tyler, the unflinching determination of James or the bleak acquiescence of Day and Fisher. 
Ullom does go for the extremities of this premise. A lot of time passes for the occupants of the vehicle -it's never clear how long but they take to sketching a calendar on the window indicating a passage of years. In all that time, Ullom never wavers in focus, and it is something of a logistical feat that so much is shot in that car from different compositions and angles. It is dynamic, but not so much so that the space stops feeling claustrophobic. Ullom is aware of his limitations, and includes many an insert shot of the vehicle on the empty road, though he finds other places to be more creative, such as a series of match-cut transitions indicating the length of the eternal voyage. He handles the space well, though less so the assaults on the vehicle in the earlier part of the film. The initial attack by the chaotic horde is largely unintelligible, with flashes of images and movement against a ton of pitch black. The confusion is a part of the effect, and it is the only place in the movie afforded typical jump scares, but it is a messy execution, frustratingly incoherent.
The farther along the movie gets, the more compelling its thought experiment becomes as differences in the characters' reactions grow more stark and the audience is seriously left to consider their own durability in such a situation. Of course there will be some who don't see it through to whatever end may come, giving up and abandoning the car for an uncertain fate. It is a tangible test of resolve that Ullom eventually confronts in quite an unexpected way, one that indeed challenges the notion of hardened endurance over giving oneself over to the trial.
It is deep and somewhat dark, but the movie is not as miserable as its situation, even through the stretches where a majority of the vehicle's occupants have resigned themselves to the dreariness of their lot (and in a chilling beat have even forgotten how they got onto the road in the first place, remembering loved ones purely through images on their phones). There is a twisted sense of humour the film occasionally indulges in, often directed at the broadly humourless James, as well as the classical absurdism of their predicament. It gives the movie colour, and even helps illuminate the interesting message you are left with in the end. It Ends does come to an end, and anticipation of just how is a solid driving force for the movie. It presents a very unsettling existentialist scenario and characters struggling against it in different and fascinating ways, characters who are easy to relate to and project upon (the whole cast does a great job). A captivatingly uneasy experience, surprisingly grounded, and an unconventional horror gem.

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