SXSW 2025 Review: IT ENDS, Angst and Fear on the Endless Road to Adulthood
A quartet of twenty-something friends out for a drive find themselves on a road to nowhere in first time feature director Alexander Ullom’s meditative sci-fi thriller, It Ends, premiering this week at the SXSW Film & TV Festival.
Headstrong James (Phinehas Yoon), snarky Day (Akira Jackson), uptight Fisher (Noah Toth), and the pragmatic Tyler (Mitchell Cole) are heading out for a celebratory last meal as close compatriots before their impending adulthoods shoot them off into different directions for the foreseeable future. Cruising down a wooded country road, their futures seem far, far away, but when it becomes clear that this road seems to be literally unending, they have to decide how they are going to approach the rest of their lives, whatever that may mean.
It Ends is a fascinating and impressive exploration of post-adolescent angst, the uncertainty of adulthood and independence, and what it really means to put childish things behind as we attempt to become our own people. The film closely examines what it is about that transition that terrifies us, perhaps now more than ever, about striking out into a world of uncertainty in an age where lives are less mapped out than they’ve ever been.
Each of the four characters represents a young adult archetype – the driven one, the up-for-anything one, the anxious one, the practical one – and how they manifest when presented with the challenge of evolving beyond the person they’ve always been. As hundreds of unending miles turn into thousands and tens of thousands, we see how each character begins to adapt to their predicament and the realization that it will only end when they make it end, and what that means for each of them.
When first attempting to stave off this eternal drive by abandoning the car, they discover that the surrounding woods are perilous and will force them back onto the road. It’s as if avoiding their problems will only create new ones, and they real solution isn’t that simple. Heavy-handed? Maybe, but it still works, and Ullom’s goals here begin to crystallize as the audience experiences this eternal angst with these riders on the endless road. What will it take to make it end, and once they figure it out, will they be able to make the necessary sacrifices?
Vaguely reminiscent of Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa’s 2003 endless road horror film, Dead End, Ullom’s film has loftier metaphorical goals than that ghostly chiller. Here the enemy is not some vengeful spirit, but time itself, as his characters attempt to bargain with infinity to make their nightmare stop. Soon they all realize that there is no stopping the future, but they can take control if they choose, it just won’t be pretty.
Though the film – even at a brisk eighty-seven minutes – can feel a little doughy and repetitive in the middle, it’s all in service of bigger ideas. We learn who each of the characters are and why they do what they do through these repeated experiences and coping mechanisms – or lack thereof. Eliciting a familiar feeling from the audience in a fantastical setting is a skill, and It Ends manages it beautifully.
Relying entirely on the performances of our four lead characters, It Ends is a hangout horror that turns into a nihilistic metaphysical thriller that can run with the best of them on a fraction of the budget that one might expect for a film with such grand ideas. Technically adept, but not flashy, It Ends is the kind of high concept project that thrives on the festival circuit, and will be a hit with horror audiences looking for something with a bit more on its mind than a series of flashy kills. Speaking to the universal fears of growing up and outgrowing the world you once knew; It Ends strikes a deep chord by relating to an anxiety to which we can all relate.
