Movie Review – ‘It Ends’ goes nowhere…and takes the audience with it

The summer of 2026 may go down as the summer of Blumhouse Atomic Monster after the studio stunned Hollywood with not one, but two blockbuster horror films. First came Obsession, a sub-$1 million budget film that not only did the unthinkable by besting its opening-week gross in weeks two through five, but also grossing over half a billion worldwide! Just a few weeks behind Obsession came Backrooms, another debut film from a first-time director. With a minimal — but far larger than Obsession — $10 million budget, Backrooms went on to gross almost $400 million worldwide. Could horror have a trifecta in it with the new release It Ends, yet another blockbuster debut from a first-time director?

Critics will tell you, “Yes!” with a 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience, though? 48%. Sorry, fellow critics, but the 52% of audience members are right. And sorry, Variety, when you describe a film as “Jean-Paul Sartre with a Gen Z spin, a hangout horror movie rife with existential anxieties,” most of the public will roll their eyes. Even some critics…

The critic vs.fan debate is one as old as time. Do critics know something fans don’t? Or are critics just another a–hole with a pen? Sometimes both. Me? I’m the latter — just a guy who views whether a film makes me laugh, makes me cry, makes me jump, makes me feel some emotion, and has me walking out of the theater having had an enjoyable experience. It Ends? Nope. Not one bit.

The film wastes no time getting into the story, with Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth), and James (Phinehas Yoon) reuniting for a road trip with Tyler (Mitchell Cole) after some time apart. Whether they’re reuniting with Tyler because he’s the one who owns a car or because the four desire one last time together before life takes them on their next journey, no one knows. Where they’re going doesn’t really matter either, as the focus is on the four and their friendship, nothing more. Little do they know, though, that the journey they’re about to experience isn’t into the world of finance or HVAC, but a road trip to nowhere.

Like many recent college grads, they’re all trying to figure out life and what’s next. Some, like James, seem to have it all figured out. The others? Not so much. What’s clear is that none of them are super happy about where they’re at in their two decades on Earth. As old friends do, the four spend their early time together catching up and debating stupid s–t like, out of four animals, picking two to defend you and two to hunt you. If this debate doesn’t move you, hang on tight because it starts to feel like that’s half the script.

When Day’s GPS takes the four down a deserted road, Tyler eventually becomes frustrated and begins questioning whether the GPS is right — we’ve all been there — so he turns around to double back and find an exit. It’s then that they find themselves stuck on a road to nowhere. And to make matters worse, when they stop, bad things happen. Night turns to daylight and back to night again as the four are forced to take shifts so the car remains in perpetual motion.

Credit Alexander Ullom, writer and director of his debut film, for taking a fairly simple story and turning it into a psychological nightmare. But therein lies the problem — the film never really moves the psyche. As the film progresses, this new-generation Speed meets Groundhog Day becomes less and less interesting, to the point that filmgoers stop caring about what happens to each character. Much of that falls on Ullom because the film starts so quickly and he never invests enough time in making viewers care about the characters. Instead, it turns into a “wait and see” as to whether anything of significance ever happens. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

Generation Z is a pretty anxiety-ridden, lost generation, and perhaps that is why Ullom has painted his canvas with four unlikeable characters. Thankfully, Jackson saves Day with a stellar performance. Side note: I’d apologize for ripping on Gen Z, but as a Gen Xer, we took more than our share on the chin.

What’s most frustrating is that there are shades of a really good film here. Ullom’s camera work, as the foursome venture out into the woods to explore the unknown, is at times terrifying. The early jump scares are solid. There are even moments when it feels like It Ends may become a modern-day The Blair Witch Project. But none of that matters because the film runs out of gas far quicker than the four characters ever will.

When I was a teenager, my parents came back from a trip to Arizona with video of their road trip. It was just an hour or so of useless banter and brown scenery over and over and over. That video still haunts me, and now, having seen It Ends, I realize the film may be based on their dull adventure, one that felt like an endless journey. Like the film, it’s a car ride I never want to experience again.