IT ENDS is that wondrous oeuvre that demands of its audience both its attention and its intelligence. To describe this unconventional road trip as an existential thriller would be glib and unworthy. What we have here is nothing less than a consideration, via allegory, of existence itself. We are asked to ponder how to live a life without the comfort of either answers or guarantees. How to keep going when trying to make rational sense of an irrational situation. The premise is esoteric, but the execution is psychologically rich and compelling thanks to performances from the four leads that delve rich emotional depths and entirely recognizable human foibles.
The four are Tyler (Mitchell Cole), Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth), and James (Phinehas Yoon), friends who are moving into the next phase of their lives after college graduation and realizing that drifting apart is as inevitable as it is a topic of conversation to be avoided. Tyler is providing the transportation for an evening food run in his Jeep after moving James into his new digs. Tyler’s the one who skipped college for the military, and as they make their way through the darkness, an engrossing argument about what the right picks are for a hypothetical battle between hawks, rats, gorillas, and an armed man reveals clues about their relationship to each other, current, past, and future. Their life plans and worldviews are revealed for their diametrical differences, presaging how they will disappear from each other’s lives despite genuine affection for one another.
So engrossed do they become in the conversation, despite James’ sneer and Tyler’s lack of interest that before they realize it, they are on a narrow road bisecting deep piney woods with no streetlights and no turnings. After traveling much longer than anticipated for a quick trip, an new argument ensues about how Tyler might have failed to follow the GPS instructions and Tyler taking umbrage in his slow southern drawl. The argument that comes to an abrupt and startled pause when Tyler’s U-turn on that straight and narrow brings not to where they started but instead right up square with a dead end.
From there the conversation turns from recrimination to processing where they could possibly be, and why the gas gauge doesn’t dip even after driving until the sun comes up after turning around from that dead end. There’s also a lack of hunger to consider, or the need for sleep, or, as James overshares, any sexual excitement. In a sequence of cascading emotions similar to the stages of grief, they accept that they are not in their version of reality anymore, a realization that sparks questions of sin, purgatory, fairness, and anything else that might have led them to this pass. And just who or what might be in the abandoned car they come upon that wasn’t there before.
Filmmaker Alex Ullom takes the eerie premise and extracts every iota of suspense and horror to be had there. From flashing brake lights half-showing what may or may not lurk in the woods on either side of the road, to the quotidian sound of a phone timer that announces that time outside the car is up before whatever it is in those woods approaches, the unreality of the situation set in familiar surroundings makes for a disquieting juxtaposition that increases with the characters’ growing and unique sense of hopelessness. Strict schedules, including primal screams, and a daily airing of grievances keeps the quartet focused until it doesn’t, and the inevitable unraveling is all the more of a gut punch for happening so quietly, suspended somewhere between apathy and acceptance.
Ullom forces us to share the boredom as well as the drama, be it those primal screams or the squabbling over whether or not eating a stray granola bar will somehow upset the scenario. There is a shock when a perfectly normal rainfall breaks the monotony, prompting anxiety that it may, or may not, be a sign of they know not after endless clear days and nights. Not to mention the isolation of no cell phone service or radio reception as they increase their mileage with no further understanding of what is happening.
Phoon, as the repressed and logical engineer James has the toughest role playing a cold exterior with an inner conflict that dares not manifest. The embodiment of stymied logic that refuses the evidence of his own eyes. Also good is Cole as the soft-spoken Tyler with his own commitment issues and quiet desperation, Jackson as Day with her own mask of an exterior disguising a nagging sense of inadequacy, and Toth as Fischer, a guy suddenly forced to take life seriously with no frame of reference for that.
IT ENDS is too smart, too sophisticated to resolve itself into a tidy denouement. Thorny propositions have been presented and Ullom is respectful of their implications. This is a counterintuitively riveting challenge to the audience as well as an emotional wringer that builds with each passing mile. Prepare to be shaken.
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