It Ends

Currently running on the festival circuit, this film by Writer/Director Alex Ullom deserves to be picked up for wider distribution.

Four friends go for a ride in a Jeep, and find themselves traveling on a road in the dark, with no visible exits. As time ticks by, they examine their lives and test their bonds with each other, trying to determine why they have been trapped there, and what the road may represent.

The Kubler-Ross stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, are represented through strong character development as they ride through the endless forest, without the need for food, water.or gas, while forces outside the car threaten their existence.

Ullom developed the story pre-covid, so the isolation brought by covid to the world had little to do with his uniquely original concept.

Four friends have helped someone move, and Tyler (Mitchell Cole) offers to drive the other three - Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth) and James (Phinehas Yoon) - to wherever they need to go, but somehow they miss a turn and find themselves stuck on a road that never seems to end. They can tell that time passes, as the sun rises and sets, night falls and morning comes, but they don't seem to feel sleepy, or hungry, or much of anything really. All they can do is to keep driving, as they try to figure out what is going on....

This sounds like a simple premise, and perhaps an obvious one: the friends are Gen Z, they've just finished college and are starting out for the "real" world (although Tyler is already there), and of course, what's the endless road ahead of them but the future? But this movie is so much more than that - the dialogue is both funny, poignant and very realistic, the relationships between these young people are completely believable, the hypotheses that they consider and discard and consider again are all things you would hope for in this type of scenario. The actors are all terrific here, and the very enclosed set (a road, a vehicle, some trees) is used to great effect. In the end, the story speaks to every generation, and it is up to each viewer to decide how to parse the film, but I found it utterly wonderful. Probably my favorite film of the year; highly recommended!

There are questions beating at the heart of It Ends, which extend into the totality of the crew's vision. As Deleuze and Guattari note in their landmark book Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, our bodies without organs are desiring machines that reproduce the wants and needs intrinsic to our systems. So it is within those context that we question, what is it exactly we want?

Do we want another burger? Will boogie get the sip?

The movie is less interested in the answers to these questions as the articulation of the feeling these postulates create. This is a creative struggle that has been featured in earlier films, most notably "David" but it's explored here in a way that adds a lot to the corpus of work it comes from, while also charting a path towards new undiscovered possibilities.

A more risk-averse filmmaker would have made a less creative film, but that's not what happened here. Great cinema.

FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL 2025

Every once in a while, the festival scene delivers on its promise, spotlighting a fresh voice in indie film who brings something genuinely original to the table. In 2023 it was Talk To Me. This year we have a clear winner... With It Ends, Alexander Ullom steps up as that filmmaker. His directorial debut is a sharp, low-key surprise that plays with expectations in all the best ways. A true indie gem that quietly impresses. The entire cast and Alexander Ullom have quite a career ahead of them.

The Q&A after the film ended was even more fascinating! Check out our YouTube later this week and we will have it posted.