Four friends embark on a post college road trip to start their adult lives. Along the way they encounter and endless highway.
So begins the movie It Ends. Other than the brief opening the entire movie takes place inside the Jeep and along that endless road. It’s a movie that speaks to the anxieties of gen Z as they enter adult life in a world that feels stagnant, endless, and repetitive. It’s an anxiety that starts before the road even turns to horror as the group shares what they plan to do with their lives. Marriage and children don’t sound like dreams to them, only markers along the road of life. Another destination to pass more than a place to arrive.
Generational anxieties are nothing new in cinema, especially horror, and I was reminded of Stephen King’s The Long Walk. A story of young men walking until one by one they give up or collapse and only one is left. While King was reacting to the prime horror of his generation, the draft and slaughter of the Vietnam War, It Ends confronts the horror at the center of gen Z. That life is meaningless. That all progress has stopped. That even in death there is no peace. These are the existential questions we all must face. Raising these questions while never truly facing them is where It Ends has its weakest moments. The questions present themselves but the group is not up to the task of addressing them. Even with four characters we only get three options: Give up and join the mindless masses in the woods; Form a routine and ignore the horror for as long as possible; Keep going no matter the costs. A little more philosophical heft would go a long way.
The biggest strength of It Ends is provoking thought in the audience. What are you doing with your life? How do you find peace with it? If you were on this road what would you do?