‘It Ends’ Trailer: Neon’s Endless Roadtrip Movie Wants to Be ‘Backrooms’ on Wheels
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- Neon acquired "It Ends" after its premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival and is positioning it as the distributor's answer to A24's "Backrooms" — the two films share a producer.
- Alex Ullom wrote and directed "It Ends" as his feature debut, casting Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Mitchell Cole as recent grads whose late-night drive turns into a cosmic-horror loop.
- Most of the film unfolds inside a white Jeep Cherokee, with IndieWire's Esther Zuckerman praising Ullom's use of interior details — flashing hazard lights and beeping door alerts — to build tension.
- Neon will release "It Ends" in New York City and Los Angeles theaters on Friday, August 21, expanding nationwide the following week.
- Post-SXSW, "It Ends" was one of the few films briefly available through Letterboxd's newly launched Video Store, which lets audiences digitally rent undistributed festival titles.
- Neon has already acquired rights to Ullom's next project, "4 X 4: The Event," before the current film reaches wide release.
Why it matters: Neon locked in Ullom for a follow-up project — "4 X 4: The Event" — before "It Ends" even hits wide release on August 21, mirroring A24's director-relationship model and signaling the distributor's bet that SXSW-acquired genre debuts can anchor a young filmmaker's career arc.
