'It Ends' Review: Promising Setup, Underdeveloped Payoff
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- Alexander Ullom directed "It Ends" as his debut feature, premiering at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival before Neon's theatrical release on Friday, August 21.
- The film follows four 20-something friends — Mitchell Cole as the taciturn driver, Phinehas Yoon as cynic James, Akira Jackson as Day, and Noah Toth as Fisher — whose late-night drive becomes a supernatural trap where the highway never arrives.
- Ullom uses the white Jeep as an almost-sentient space, mining the glow of flashing hazard lights and the chime of an open door for tension in the early stretches.
- The film's central rules are hand-waved: the four can drive indefinitely without getting hungry, tired, or needing the bathroom, while their phones retain full battery and internet service throughout.
- Post-grad malaise is the stated thematic engine, with the road trip channeling the "what am I doing with my life" anxieties of recent graduates on the cusp of adulthood.
- The reviewer argues the four characters aren't developed enough beyond banter and circumstance, with Yoon's increasingly obsessive James remaining "more representative than human."
- By the climax, the film reads as a nihilistic "fuck you" to invested viewers, the reviewer writes — a punchline that undercuts the earlier spooky promise rather than deepening it.
Why it matters: For indie horror audiences tracking SXSW-to-theater pipelines, the verdict is a mixed signal: Neon's August 21 theatrical commitment signals distributor confidence in Ullom's debut, but the critic's assessment is that the film's existential premise outruns its character work and payoff, leaving the strongest gimmick — the never-ending road — stranded without a destination that earns its bleakness.
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