It Ends

An opening shot at dusk of an empty abandoned car on a lonely road surrounded by dense forest, leads into four friends in a car in full banter mode.

Tyler (Mitchell Cole), James (Phineas Yoon), Day (Akira Jackson) and Fisher (Noah Toth) are so busy talking and annoying each other that they it takes a while for Tyler to pick up that they have missed their turn off. Turning back they find that there is no turn off as they come to a dead end and forced to go back in the same direction down a seemingly endless road.

The four try to work out what is going on at the same time giving more away about their characters and attitudes to each other. They don’t feel hunger, sleep or any of the things thought of as natural for them to function.

Taking time out of the car they are attacked by other people and just about escape. Later they work out that they have around 1 minute 30 seconds before they must return to the car and drive off.

Various theories are advanced as to what has happened to them. Dead, purgatory, punishment for a past sin. All mulled over and argued over yet none very satisfactory. Eventually it becomes too much and the friendships begin to splinter.

Written and directed by Alexander Ullom, It Ends is a psychological thriller that annoys as much as it intrigues. It’s necessarily repetitive as the format depends on the protagonists taking a break from the driving and get back in once the danger approaches.

The intrigue is in how this will end and who will survive. With the latter there’s an element of character study as they begin to realise the situation and how they deal with it.

There’s the (pseudo?) intellectual whose natural questioning and curiosity will not allow him to let it go. Another has no time for that and while others just begin to tire of it all. None of them could be accused of taking the wrong decision.

So what to make of the conclusion? It is satisfactory and bearing in mind the ‘survivor’, logical. There are cruder take aways that could be taken from the film and maybe Ullom is working on bigger issues as well as playing with the expectations of the audience. Whatever, there’s plenty of food for thought here.

It Ends will be available to buy from 5 October 2026 from Signature Entertainment.