It Ends starts off as a simple horror about a road that just keeps going, and ends up being the kind of movie that gives you an existential crisis on top of the horror show we’re currently living in 2026.
And it’s not exactly what I want from my movies. Living is hard. I don’t need more crises in my life. But what It Ends does really well is making me take pause, look at what I’m doing with my life, and focus on what matters to me. Not what matters to someone else, not what society expects of me, and not what my family wants. Just me.
Let’s backtrack a little.
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It Ends starts with a group of friends getting together and entering the most terrifying journey of all: adulthood. From the jump you can tell that these people are A) very different and B) care about each other deeply. And what was a simple road trip turns terrifying when the road just keeps going. Oh and there are people coming out of the woods if they stop for more than a minute and a half.
To be clear, I hated the characters in the beginning. They clearly held some sort of resentments or hidden truths against each other, others were too clinical for me, and it felt like they weren’t listening to each other. But I stuck around because when you start a movie with characters who annoy you a little bit, at least in my book, that could lead to some of the most dynamic changes for the characters thanks to the writing, acting, and directing. And I was right applying this logic to It Ends.
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The road that never ends in It Ends acts as a stripped down version of life. Because we do the same thing over and over again like waking up, going to work, eating, sleeping, etc. And sometimes it feels pointless, repetitive, and with no end in sight. But there is. It’s death. So what are you going to do about it in the meantime? How are you going to spend your life on this road? And I could see that beautifully represented through Day, Fisher, James, and Tyler.
When it comes to this friend group, Tyler was the one who couldn’t do it anymore, despite being the most logical one and the one I connected to instantly. The weight of this never-ending cycle on the road was too much and he decided to stop. Then there was Day, James, and Fisher. They created this system that supported each other, supported themselves, and kept them going, making unique memories along the way. But even they reached their endpoint where they just wanted to live without trying to find meaning in the road. And then there was James, the one that was so desperate to find meaning on this road, that he didn’t enjoy his time on the road in the first place.
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It Ends left me feeling like I was having a bit of an existential crisis due to the fact that I was just recently laid off. And seeing these four young people on this road experience a microcosm of life within this car and on this road, made me ask myself what am I enjoying in life? What am I prioritizing? And what can I change?
When you make someone transpose the idea in a movie into their real life, you have something magical and noteworthy in your hands. Because your idea, your movie, is no longer living on that screen. It’s living in that person and walking through life. And those are the best kinds of movies, despite the existential crisis that I found myself dipping my toes into. Because we can all relate to that question of what is the point of life? And as cheesy as it sounds, it’s about the journey and those you share it with. Nothing less. Nothing more. And the sooner you realize that, the better you’ll be in the long run.
It Ends is now in theaters.
