There is a very specific kind of terror that only works on people who have ever driven down a dark road at two in the morning and wondered, just for a second, what would happen if the road simply never stopped. It Ends takes that exact fear and stretches it across eighty-nine minutes of pure existential dread, and honestly? It’s one of the most unsettling debut features in recent memory.
Alexander Ullom wrote and directed this Gen Z road horror about four recent graduates who head out for a late-night food run and accidentally turn onto a two-lane highway that appears to go on forever. That’s the entire premise, and it’s exactly as suffocating as it sounds. Trapped inside a Jeep Cherokee with miles stretching infinitely ahead and cosmic horrors lurking just beyond the headlights, the friends face a choice: embrace their new existence or fight to escape it.
The Jeep becomes a pressure cooker of anxiety as the miles tick by and the gas tank never empties. It’s Jean-Paul Sartre with a Gen Z spin, and somehow that combination works better than it has any right to.
What makes It Ends genuinely impressive is how Ullom built this thing from the ground up with almost no resources. The cast was sourced from Instagram. An early investor came on board after a VR poker game with the director. The crew was made up entirely of Gen Z filmmakers who understood that limitation breeds creativity. Ullom was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2024, and this movie proves that recognition was earned. It premiered at SXSW to critical acclaim before Neon acquired worldwide rights for a theatrical release.
Neon’s marketing for It Ends has been appropriately unhinged. They staged a 36-hour endurance screening at a New York cinema where teams of four could win up to $540 each for staying through the entire marathon. That’s twenty-five showings of the same movie back to back. The fact that people actually signed up for this says everything about how effectively the film’s premise burrows into your brain. The theater itself becomes part of the experience. It doesn’t just want to scare you. It wants to make you question whether you would have the stamina to survive its particular hell.
The film stars Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Mitchell Cole as the trapped graduates. Ullom uses the car’s features to his advantage, mining the uncomfortable glow of flashing hazard lights and the incessant beeping of an open door for tension. It’s the kind of low-budget ingenuity that big studio horror has mostly abandoned in favor of CGI demons and cheap jump scares.
It Ends understands that the scariest thing in the world is being trapped somewhere with no explanation and no exit. The movie opened in theaters on August 21, and if you have even a passing interest in horror that actually thinks, you should probably clear your schedule. Just maybe don’t drive home alone afterward.
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