Movie Review: It Ends (Chicago Critics Film Festival)
It Ends starts with four friends, Tyler (Mitchell Cole), James (Phinehas Yoon), Fisher (Noah Toth), and Day (Akira Jackson) are on a seemingly late-night cruise. Their GPS has them make a right turn down a dark road. After driving down the road for a bit, they turn around to go back to the main highway, only for them to continue driving on the same road. They soon realize they might be on a never-ending road.
Writer/director Alex Ullom’s debut might sound like the beginning of a Twilight Zone episode, but don’t let the simplicity of the plot deter you from seeking the film out. It Ends blew me away when I saw it at the 2025 Chicago Critics Film Festival. It is a thought-provoking piece of cinema about what we choose to accept in our lives and the consequences of those decisions. The result is one of the best movies I have seen this year.
Ullom sets the characters up perfectly to start the film, giving each of them moments that allow us to understand them. Tyler has recently finished military training. He’s driving the car to start the film and is quieter and more subdued, thinking about everything before he speaks, taking everything seriously. James just started an entry-level engineering job and seems to know what his life will become while also thinking about everything in a logical sense, assuming that there is a correct answer for everything. Fisher and Day recently graduated from college, and their lives and careers are up in the air, and both have a more free-spirited attitude. Ullom smartly establishes that despite being friends, roughly the same age, these four people have different personalities, different views on life, and are in different places in their lives.
It’s when the group realizes they are on a never-ending road that who they are and who they will become come to ahead. They start noticing weird things happening like the car never running out of gas despite being at a quarter of a tank, them never being hungry or tired, or the large group of screaming people who emerge from the surrounding woods trying to attack the car, which is genuinely terrifying when it first happens but then becomes more tragic when you dive deeper into the film’s meaning. The car ride becomes contentious, with some believing the road will eventually end, some accepting their reality, and others just along for the ride until they feel like they’re done, similar to how we go about life. Some want more out of it, some are content with where they are and what they are doing, and others aren’t sure and will figure it out eventually.
It Ends is tough to review because it feels like a cinematic Rorschach Test. There might be some people who watch this film and see it as just four people on an endless road. There will be others who connect with it like it did, and there will be others who find another reason why these four people are on this endless road. It’s also a film that I could have watched ten years ago and identified with it differently, whether thematically or with a character. It’s a movie that I can watch in ten years, and it will feel different than what I watched at this time in my life. It Ends is fueled by the indie spirit, with Ullom using crafty techniques and unknown actors to convey his story and message. The result is a profound masterpiece and a stunning piece of filmmaking.
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