When I was a much younger Wolfman (Wolfboy, I suppose), I was equally intrigued and terrified of getting lost. Not that I was going on regular excursions into the unknown, but the events of The Blair Witch Project really freaked me the hell out, and, to a lesser extent, YellowBrickRoad also unnerved me. We really are living in a renaissance of liminal horror, thanks to movies like Backrooms, Skinamarink, and Exit 8, almost as if events of recent years have made filmmakers feel trapped in endless banality (more on that shortly). It Ends, which premiered in March 2025 and is only now landing in theaters, is the latest entry into the world of liminal horror, and while it doesn’t reinvent any expectations of the subgenre, it’s an effectively satisfying exploration of taking the present for granted when all you want is to get to another destination.

High school friends James (Phinehas Yoon), Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth), and Tyler (Mitchell Cole) have reunited after graduating college to go on a road trip to…somewhere. As they bicker and debate innocuous subjects, they realize on a desolate road that an anticipated turn hasn’t appeared. Thinking they missed it, they turn around, and despite driving straight back, they hit a dead end. Confused, they exit the car, only for a horde of people to come running at the car, screaming, for no rhyme or reason. No matter how long they drive, their car never loses gas, they never get hungry or tired, and no sign of where they are or how they can get out appears, leaving them to rightfully question what the hell is happening.

As someone who has seen roughly a billion low-budget genre movies, there isn’t much in the inherent concept that felt especially original. The production budget could have easily been just a few thousand dollars to cover the cast and crew, along with the cost of renting a car. Despite the movie feeling similar structurally to things I’ve seen before that have, well, sucked, the dynamic between the actors immediately engages you. Between Alexander Ullom‘s direction and script, along with the performances of the main cast, you’re immediately hooked into the banal conversations the characters are having and the chemistry between them sells their history effectively. Each individual character manages to be just quirky and unique enough to engage you without needing arbitrary, exaggerated character traits. The cold open alone is effective enough in its own right that it could have been a short film, and that’s just the introduction to get the audience warmed up to the existential dread we witness throughout the rest of the runtime.

I won’t get into all the nitty-gritty details of what these friends discover along the way, but I can say each new wrinkle reveals itself organically. Ullom successfully found the balance of highlighting the unnerving concept by denying the audience and the characters new information, while also injecting unexpected pieces of lore as our interest started to wane. With only a 90-minute run time, the narrative never runs out of steam, even if there might be some meandering lulls as the characters have to occupy our time.

The idea of liminal spaces or getting lost in mundane environments isn’t at all a new idea, but it’s hard to deny the rise in their popularity since the pandemic forced people to lock themselves in their houses for two years. That sucked ass! Even though many of the aforementioned liminal horrors don’t inherently connect to the pandemic, it’s hard to ignore the correlation. While the characters themselves don’t mention the pandemic, they all feel like their lives have plateaued, whether that be because of their careers or relationships or any number of other factors, despite their lives actually just getting started. Everyone watching the movie can relate to this idea, and the events of It Ends remind you that you could be trapped in a much, much worse situation.

One of the biggest struggles a movie with such an engaging premise faces is that you have to pay off what the hell is happening in some way. This is another balancing act that Ullom had to navigate, because if you deliver too much mythology, it’s easy for a story to feel too convoluted, and if you deny any substantial reveals, the journey can feel pointless. While I won’t reveal the destination that It Ends takes us to, I can say it sticks the landing of offering us just enough answers to satiate while still leaving us with a million more questions.

For a number of reasons, It Ends had dozens of opportunities to veer off course and plummet into a ravine alongside the countless other low-budget “we didn’t have money so thought sticking four people together could turn into a horror movie” disasters, and it never suffered that fate. The movie finds a way to be silly, spooky, thought-provoking, and enlightening in how it tackles the way an entire generation feels after having gone through the pandemic and come out the other side, while also not needing to have that lived-in experience of a seemingly endless monotony to still be effective. Anyone who watches It Ends will have felt stuck in their routines in some way, shape, or form throughout their lives, and while the movie might not change your life, you’ll realize that virtually any boring patterns you’re stuck in could always be worse, and there’s always time to change them.

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