"It Ends" (Ullom, 2025) - Review

It Ends uses horror to talk about something much more familiar: the fear of moving on. 

Written by Codie Allen

There’s something uniquely terrifying about being young and having absolutely no idea what comes next. It Ends takes that very ordinary fear and drops it onto an impossible road, turning the anxiety of growing up into a strange, funny, occasionally unsettling little nightmare.

Alexander Ullom’s feature debut follows four friends on what should be a pretty mundane drive after helping one of them move out. Instead, they take a wrong turn and suddenly find themselves trapped on a road that simply refuses to end. There’s no easy way out, and stopping the car brings its own horrifying consequences. Soon, the road becomes less about figuring out where they are and more about forcing these four people to sit with one another, their fears, and the uncomfortable realization that their lives are about to change whether they’re ready for it or not.

What I liked most about It Ends is that it understands the horror isn’t necessarily the road itself. It’s the feeling of being stuck. That feeling of watching everyone around you move forward while you’re still trying to figure out who you are, what you want, and whether the person you’ve been is someone you even recognize anymore. For a story centered around recent college graduates, that idea feels particularly fitting. There’s an enormous pressure placed on young people to immediately have their lives figured out, and the film finds a wonderfully strange way of expressing how overwhelming that can be.

The four leads are a huge part of why it works. They feel like actual friends rather than four characters conveniently thrown together for a horror movie. They interrupt each other, annoy each other, make jokes at the wrong time, and carry years of history into every conversation. There’s affection between them, but there’s also resentment and insecurity bubbling underneath it. The longer they remain trapped together, the harder it becomes to hide those things.

Phinehas Yoon especially gives the film an emotional center, bringing a guarded quality to his character that slowly begins to crack as the situation becomes more impossible. But the ensemble works best as a whole. Nobody feels completely comfortable with where their life is heading, even if they express that uncertainty differently. That makes their conversations feel more important than simply filling time between scares.

And this is definitely a movie that becomes more interested in conversation than conventional horror. The opening stretches of It Ends have a frantic energy that immediately sells the terror of the situation, but eventually that urgency fades. The characters become accustomed to the rules of their strange little nightmare, and the movie settles into something quieter and more contemplative. I appreciated that shift, even if I could feel the pacing drag in places.

The film’s refusal to completely explain itself will probably be divisive. Personally, I liked that It Ends trusts its audience enough to leave some things unresolved. I don’t necessarily need every strange occurrence to come with a paragraph of mythology explaining exactly what happened. The road works better as a feeling than as a puzzle that needs solving. Still, there were moments where I wanted the movie to push its ideas a little further rather than circling around them.

Visually, Ullom gets a surprising amount out of such a confined premise. Spending so much time inside a car could easily become monotonous, but the film finds little ways to make the environment feel increasingly oppressive. The road itself becomes this endless stretch of possibility and hopelessness at the same time. Every turn promises an escape, and every time that hope disappears, the characters are forced back into themselves.

What ultimately stayed with me is how It Ends uses horror to talk about something much more familiar: the fear of moving on. Friendships change. Plans fall apart. People grow in different directions. Eventually, the people you spent your formative years with aren't necessarily going to occupy the same place in your life anymore. That can be exciting, but it can also be heartbreaking.

It Ends isn't perfect. The middle can meander, and its deliberately vague approach won't work for everyone. But there’s something genuinely charming about a movie this strange taking such a sincere interest in its characters. It’s funny, eerie, occasionally melancholic, and most importantly, it feels like it has something on its mind beyond simply trying to scare you.

Sometimes the scariest thing isn’t knowing where you’re going. It’s realizing that everyone expects you to know already.

It Ends will be released in U.S theatres on August 21 and in Canadian theatres on August 28.

Photo: Courtesy of NEON