31 Days of Halloween: It Ends

2025, Alexander Ullom (feature premiere) -- download

Sorry about the last post. Google has decided I said something "adult" and has hidden it behind a "you have to sign in" link. They won't tell me what I said -- after 15 years of writing here, its not like I am saying something suddenly disruptive, but I have an idea. But anywayz, the movie was about gangs of LA, bad cops and vampires.

The first challenge with this movie was getting over the Gen Z protagonists, all of an age where they have been going to college and are about to, or have just entered "real life". They are obviously all life-long friends, but... wow, are they insufferable with each other, almost intolerable. Maybe being horrible to each other was their schtick? In most movies this would end up leading to reveals of deep seated historical resentments and betrayal, but no, this is just who they are. 

So, unlike most "road horror movies", we don't start with the overhead shot of nothing but trees and a car's headlights breaking the gloom. We get a brief glimpse from the forest floor, looking upwards, but then we are just in the car, the kids (and to me, at my age, they are kids) heading out to... we don't know; all we know is that its the first right and just up the road. But as soon as they make the right, dusk becoming night, they notice there hasn't been a turn off for a while, and the GPS on their phone just says "go straight." Eventually they, but mainly the aggressive driver Tyler, agree to do a U-turn and head back. Except, it ends. They way they came in has become the impassable forest.

And that's the premise of the movie. The road has mysteriously become all that there is. Tossing traditional horror movie structure to the wind, it becomes more scifi, more existential dread, more psychological terror, than anything else.

So, Tyler (Mitchell Cole, Against the Spread), Fish(er) (Noah Toth, Unfix), James (Phinehas Yoon, Smoking Tigers) and Day (Akira Jackson, Against the Spread) are the kids. Two of them are in / just finishing college. James has entered the ratrace, and Tyler joined the military but has never deployed. They are together for the first time in a while, to ... help one move? The ambiguity of their gathering is a very intentional technique, which becomes highlighted as the movie goes on, as time passes, as they begin to forget life before the road. 

So yeah, there is the road, and its structure, and its elements. At the beginning of the trip, after noticing there are no turn offs, and turning back to The End / The Beginning, they discover the woods are full of people - screaming, yelling, grabbing, clawing people who are desperate to get into the car. "Help me!!!" they cry out. The friends never ask what is going on, of the strangers, just panic and drive away, Fish has been clawed-at and injured, the rest just freaked out. They drive. Eventually night becomes dawn becomes day. They stop. After about 1 minute 30, the people come screaming from the woods again.

Each of them reacts differently to the situation. James is calm, unemotional and trying to put together reasons from what's going on. Fish is having panic attacks. Tyler is aggressive and angry. Day just tries to be diplomatic. They eventually notice that the gas isn't going below a quarter tank, and they don't have any need for bodily functions, and they don't get tired or need to / can sleep. A few things change, or new things happen, the longer they drive: fewer people, and then, abandoned cars, and finally other people who abandoned those cars, and just ... gave up, lying on the side of the road, alive but unresponsive. But mostly it is the same, for a very very long time.

And that's it. That's the movie. The driving, the friends, the conflict, the ideas, the time, the talking and the talking and the talking, the talking to survive madness, the talking to distract, the talking because what else is there to do. There are no explanations, and that becomes apparent, despite James believing he can figure it out given enough road. The metaphors for what is going on are numerous, and despite being the filmmakers intent, as someone much older than him, I don't suffer from not knowing what is coming next. I know what is next -- more of the same. And, well that's pretty heavily an element of the movie too. 

Movies without resolutions can be maddening. The "ending explained" posts are probably having a field day with this movie, and I suspect they will all get it wrong. I rather liked the movie, but maybe because I am rather intimate with existential dread these days, it just felt comfortable. And once they were settled into what they were suffering, I had more sympathy for the kids.