Preparing to set out on a long car journey, naivety tends to get the best of us. “Google Maps says it’ll take eight hours, but I’m pretty sure I can make it in six.” We plan, and God laughs. Pull over to use the bathroom, switch between speed limits, and wait for an inevitable bout of traffic to slow the car’s pace to a crawl for who knows how long. Whether we planned for them or not, the road is filled with obstacles, detours and dead ends. Eventually, the novelty of the road trip fades, and hope subsides. The car is home until proven otherwise.
“It Ends,” the bold and breathtaking feature debut from writer-director Alexander Ullom, travels a similar trajectory, both in the context of the film itself and its intrepid journey to the big screen. The movie follows four friends in their early 20s — Day (Akira Jackson), James (Phinehas Yoon), Tyler (Mitchell Cole) and Fisher (Noah Toth) — who pile into a car for one last group hang before real life starts. On the way to their destination, they turn onto a two-lane road that seems to stretch on forever, with the way they came now blocked by dense forest. What’s more, every time they exit the car for more than 90 seconds, they’re swarmed by screaming-mad people who emerge from the woods, begging for help. The group’s only solution is to keep driving, hoping that the road will eventually end.
