‘It Ends’ Review: College Grads Find Themselves on Long Road to Nowhere in Promising but Underdeveloped Indie Horror Movie
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- Alexander Ullom directed 'It Ends' as his debut feature, premiering at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival before the review originally published on March 7, 2025.
- Neon acquired the film for theatrical release on Friday, August 21, 2025.
- Mitchell Cole, Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, and Noah Toth star as four college friends whose road trip turns supernatural when the highway they were promised never appears on Day's navigation.
- The film's survival rule — characters must keep the car running and driving to stay alive, and never get hungry or tired — is explained with 'a proverbial wave of the hand' and invites viewers to poke logical holes.
- Post-grad malaise is a stated central theme, with the trip standing in for 'the what am I doing with my life fears' common to the characters' age bracket.
- The reviewer calls the conclusion a 'gotcha punchline' that 'laughs in the face of anyone actually invested in the story,' describing the overall effect as 'a fuck you to its audience.'
- Phinehas Yoon's James receives the most character work, becoming increasingly obsessed with solving the mystery while his three companions resign themselves to their fate.
Why it matters: For genre indie fans tracking the SXSW-to-theatrical pipeline, Neon is opening 'It Ends' on August 21 with a high-concept hook but a payoff the reviewer reads as nihilistic rather than insightful. The source text explicitly anchors the horror in post-grad existential dread — an angle worth weighing beyond the surface-level 'road to nowhere' premise.
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