Endless

Riley Jean Stanheight (Alexandra Shipp) is driving a car with boyfriend passenger Chris Douglas. There is a car accident and Chris is killed. Riley recovers and blames herself. Chris is dead walking the Earth with fellow dead man Jordan.

The blame for the accident is misplaced all around. The tail lights and the texting are contributing factors but these kids are beating up on themselves in an over-the-top melodramatic fashion. Of course, it's a teen melodrama but this is done in a weak way. There are elements in the ghost connection that is intriguing but it's not well developed into something dramatic. This movie lacks real drama.

A okay teenage movie dealing with the subject of loss. The acting is fine and the story will be good either for younger viewers or for those that haven't watched Ghost. Not bad.

I really wanted to like this as I'm a huge fan of epic romance/drama movies. However this came up pretty short for me and a bit of a disappointment. I feel like this could have been so much better and had potential but just didn't deliver. Alexandra Shipp's acting was well done but I didn't get a sense of chemistry between her and the male actor ( forgot name). The story could have been stronger and more emotional if there was any chemistry between the two as I mentioned but unfortunately it felt forced. I've only watched this one time and so many aspects of the movie were just forgettable, it just doesn't stick out to me and I honestly doubt I would watch it again. Over all it was just ok & decent I guess but didn't suffice as a strong love story.

Riley (Alexandra Shipp) and Chris (Nicholas Hamilton) are teenage lovers about to be torn apart... but not in the way you think. Riley is about to turn her back on her talent for comic-book art to follow her parents' wishes: to study law on the other side of the country in Georgetown. Chris is from the other side of the tracks - aren't they always in these films? - living in a one-parent family with his mother Lee (Bond-girl Famke Janssen).

But fate is about to push them even further apart as - with an advert as to why drinking, texting and driving don't mix - Chris is killed in a car crash. Tragedy - when the feeling's gone and you can't go on! Can their love for each other reach beyond death itself, and if so, at what cost?

We've been here before of course with the Demi Moore / Patrick Swayze hit "Ghost" from 1990. That was an Oscar winner (Best Supporting Actress for Whoopi Goldberg and screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin). Will "Endless" - a teen-love version - match this potential? Unfortunately, without a potter's wheel in sight, it doesn't stand a ghost of a chance.

It feels like it's not for the want of trying from the five youngsters* at the heart of the action, with Eddie Ramos and Zoë Belkin playing the lover's best friends and DeRon Horton being the limbo-trapped ghost-guide equivalent to the subway dropout from "Ghost". (* I say "youngsters", but most seem to be in their late twenties!) )

All seem to invest their energy into the project. Unfortunately, with the exception of Alexandra Shipp, the energy is not matched with great acting talent. Poor Nicholas Hamilton (the bully from "It") seems to have a particularly limited range, with his resting acting expression being "gormless".

None of the adult actors fair much better, and I found Famke Janssen particularly unconvincing as the grieving mother.

As I said, the exception here is Alexandra Shipp, who had a supporting role in "Love, Simon" and a more centre-stage role as "Storm" in the otherwise disappointing "X-Men: Dark Phoenix". Here she remains eminently watchable, but is hog-bound by a seriously dodgy script.

If you read my bob-the-movie-man blog regularly, you will know I reach for my flame-thrower at the appearance of voiceovers. And the start of this movie made me shudder with fear as a "tell, not show" approach was followed. It's a mild blessing that the script - by Andre Case and O'Neil Sharma - used this device purely as a slightly lazy way to set the scene and the voiceover didn't rear its ugly head again.

However, on a broader basis, the screenplay doesn't excite with predictability being its middle name. Worse still, it contains lines of mansplaining dialogue that are absolute stinkers. Frustratingly, the story just doesn't really GO anywhere, despite the opportunities to do so. There's an absent father angle, and I was just begging for it to be RILEY that was being told to have the confrontation... but no! And there are whole sections of the movie that defy belief, with a police investigation in particular appearing completely incompetent. The result is that it adds neither drama or tension.

Through my career in IT I've had the great fortune to travel to a number of small cities in Canada, and all have appealed with their consistently picturesque qualities and consistently quirky individuals! Here we have the cities of Kelowna and Vernon in British Columbia playing California, and the drone cinematography (by Frank Borin and Mark Dobrescu) displays the dramatic lake-filled scenery to the full.

With so many cookie-cutter movies out there, it feels like the non-horror "Ghost" recipe (or "Heaven Can Wait" / "It's a Wonderful Life" / "A Matter of Life and Death" / delete per your preference) is well overdue for a makeover. Unfortunately, director Scott Speer's attempt just isn't good enough to fill the void. And that's a shame.

(For the full graphical review, please check out bob-the-movie-man on the web or One Mann's Movies on Facebook. Thanks.)

Endless is a new romantic drama directed by Scott Speer, the director of I Still See You and Midnight Sun.

The film is about the couple Riley (Alexandra Shipp) and Chris (Nicholas Hamilton). Both have just graduated from high school. Riley can continue studying at university, but Chris thinks she should opt for a more creative education. When the two end up in a tragic car accident, Chris is killed. Riley blames himself for his death and ends up in depression. However, Chris is stuck in a world between life and death and thus manages to make contact with Riley. At first, Riley thinks she's going crazy, but when Chris manages to prove that he was able to connect with her as a ghost, the two begin to believe that the bond of true lovers transcends life and death.

This movie can be fun for young teens, but for an older audience it can quickly become predictable. In terms of story, this film is very similar to the 1990 film Ghost. Scott Speer also played with the concept of an afterlife scenario in his film I Still See You, but chose to make more of a horror film. With this film he really seems to play more into the drama aspect of an afterlife scenario, but now with a familiar and somewhat standard story. The script of this film is therefore written by beginning script writers.

Thanks to the default script, the cast doesn't have much to work with either. Alexandra Shipp and Nicholas Hamilton come across well as a teenage couple. When death separates their characters, their mutual bond weakens in the film. Catherine Lough Haggquist and Famke Janssen do good acting as the mothers of the two teens, but both have done better acting in their other films.