It Ends Review: The Road to Nowhere May Lead to Enlightenment

There’s a Zen koan about a monk, hanging off a cliffside on a vine being chewed by mice, with a tiger above him and one below. In the middle of this peril, he sees a wild strawberry, plucks it, eats it, and announces to no one in particular, “Ah, how sweet!”

Like all koans, it’s ambiguous. Is he appreciating the ephemeral nature of life, or is he distracted by momentary pleasures of the flesh from solving his predicament?

That’s also the central question of It Ends, a strange and intriguing road trip that disguises itself as part of the new trend of liminal horror spearheaded by Backrooms and Exit 8. Its reality is actually a textured and questioning discourse on the purpose of struggle, centered around a quartet of twentysomethings driving on an endless road.

The South by Southwest 2025 title is actually set precisely on the day that three of the four – Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth), and James (Phinehas Yoon) – are met by their old friend, Tyler (Mitchell Cole) as they prepare to leave college. They take a turn down a road and with that the rest of the world is gone. It’s just them, the car, the forest around it, and nothing else. Time, hunger, even mileage become meaningless as they drive and drive and drive.

First-time director Alexander Ullom takes the “endless road” concept of earlier horrors like 2003’s Dead End and The Long Walk and strips away the explosions of gruesome violence that mark the end points for the travelers. Instead, the only way out is to stop the car and get out, to face a different and potentially even more terrifying uncertainty. The quartet becomes increasingly divided on the wisdom or madness of just staying the course, especially since there’s no real sign that there’s a course in the first place.

Experimentation leads to the discovery of certain rules of this infinite highway, while the friends develop survival mechanisms that are intended to distract rather than allow them to solve their problems. As their conversations devolve into a mix of therapy speak and road trip games, perspectives and aspirations shift. The horrifying becomes the mundane, the insane becomes normalized.

For all the cell phones and conversations about memes, at its core It Ends never feels excessively contemporary. The peril that pervades the story is the idea of being impossibly lost, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, with this constant pressure to be in motion. Ullom has extracted the essence of a newly minted adult’s crushing disappointment at what being a grown-up means, and the lack of clear guidance about what’s next.

The opening conversation between white collar aspirant James and military veteran/HVAC mechanic Tyler more than points to this as one potential interpretation, especially when seemingly random mobs of baying strangers erupt from the woods and try to take the car or at least be taken with them. It’s obvious why James, the one with that elusive “real” job, seems set to be the one to hold on to hope and reason the longest, the have-a-little perpetually fleeing from the have-nots.

Like any metaphor extended to 90 minutes, It Ends becomes a little overextended – but only barely, and that’s a testament to Ullom’s adept direction and self-control, hacking down an earlier three-hour cut to a slim and elegant 90 minutes. In this refined version the existential horror aspect is in conflict with a more metaphysical optimism, and that may well be the point. Ullom doesn’t put a literal strawberry on the screen. Instead, he lets each character decide whether the constant drive is worth the effort, and encourages the audience to wonder who, if any, is making the right choice. While the eternal nature of the road in It Ends seems to be a curse, the open-ended nature of its discussion of purpose may turn out to be its biggest blessing.

It Ends

2025, R, 90 min. Directed by Alexander Ullom. Starring Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, Mitchell Cole.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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