Cast
- Phinehas Yoon as James
- Akira Jackson as Day
- Noah Toth as Fisher
- Mitchell Cole as Tyler
- Jon Linstad as Interrogated Man
- Jenny Doyle as Voice of Fisher's Mom
- Ian Weir as Lost Man
- Alexander Ullom as New Passenger
| It Ends | |
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| Directed by | Alexander Ullom |
| Written by | Alexander Ullom |
| Produced by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography |
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| Edited by | Alexander Ullom |
| Music by | Matthew Robert Cooper |
Production companies |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 87 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
It Ends is a 2025 American existential horror film written, edited and directed by Alexander Ullom, in his directorial debut. It stars Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth and Mitchell Cole. [1] [2] It follows a friend group of graduates who go on a late night drive, but accidentally turn onto a never-ending, two-lane hellscape surrounded by untold horrors and cosmic forces beyond their understanding.
It Ends had its premiere at the South by Southwest Festival on March 7, 2025. [3] [4] It was released digitally on the Letterboxd Video Store service on December 10, 2025 until January 9, 2026, before a theatrical release by Neon in 2026.
Three recent graduates – analytical, reserved James; secretly troubled Day; and laidback Fisher – are picked up by their friend Tyler, whom they haven't seen for a year. Tyler drives them down a country road while James and Fisher have silly theoretical discussions about which animals would win in a fight, but struggles to find the turn-off they're looking for. He turns the car around, but the way from which they entered is now a dead end.
The group are split over whether Tyler made a mistake, with James especially doubtful. Tyler gets out of the car to investigate and James follows, but suddenly dozens of people screaming "Help me!" swarm from the forest and try to take control of the vehicle. They manage to escape.
Later, Tyler inspects the truck and says that the engine is broken and that it shouldn't be running. He advises not to turn the engine off. Another attack by forest people sends them on again.
They drive for a full day, but don't feel tired or hungry. The car is also not consuming petrol. James theorises that they may have crashed and are now dead or cursed. They try to work out if something they had done caused them to be trapped in limbo, thinking that telling the truth could free them. Day says she attempted suicide. James admits that the group are his best friends, and that he loves them. Nothing changes.
Days pass. They work out that they have 90 seconds upon stopping the car before the forest people attack. Tyler and James find one of the forest people and interrogate him, but all he says is "Help me!" Later, they find another car parked on the opposite side of the road, the driver having seemingly given up and walked into the woods. The odometer is at over a million miles.
After 56,182 miles of driving, Tyler gives up. He walks into the woods and tells James to tell the others to drive on without him. Day and Fisher are horrified, but an attack by forest people spurs them on.
Some time later, the group have adapted, creating routines and rituals to get by. Day and Fisher have daily screaming sessions to let out their frustration, which James doesn't join in with. The group also engage in pointless, playful arguments over which things they like or hate. Periodically they steal items from other abandoned cars to amuse themselves. Day and Fisher take to this more comfortably than James, who is determined to figure out how to escape the road.
One day, while inspecting another abandoned car, they realise that nobody is racing out of the forests any more. They spot one person, presumably the driver, by the roadside. He is aware of them but refuses to respond to their questions. Driving away, James is elated and believes that they may be moving towards an exit. He is frustrated that Fisher and Day are less excited. After 835,471 miles, they have given up.
Fisher and Day become more detached and reserved. One night, they pull up, turn off the engine and take the keys from the car. They tell James that they have accepted that there is no escape, and say that James is just torturing himself with hope by continuing to drive. He wrestles the keys from them, but the engine won't start. James becomes more frantic, praying for help, and the engine starts. Day and Fisher hold each other by the roadside while he drives away.
After 1,153,956 miles, James experiences rain for the first time since arriving on the road. The shower is brief, but the disturbance in routine shakes him, and he fears a punishment from God. After many, many more days pass, he arrives at dozens of abandoned cars. He is horrified to see that the asphalt runs out at a field surrounded by trees, with just a single sign reading: ROAD ENDS.
James sits motionless for 24 hours. He eats a Clif energy bar - the one piece of food they had, which he'd told Day not to eat in case it lay undigested in her stomach for eternity - and cries over how good it tastes. He finally screams.
James turns the car around and begins driving back down the road to find Fisher and Day. He stops off at an abandoned vehicle and pulls the prone driver out of the woods and into his car, not wanting to be alone. As they drive off, he asks the man one of the silly hypotheticals he asked Fisher at the start of the film: "Who'd win between 50 hawks and a guy with a gun?" The man slowly turns his head and replies: "Probably the- probably the hawks. There's, like, 50 of them." They drive on.
It Ends premiered at the South by Southwest Festival on March 7, 2025. [5] [6]
On December 8, 2025, Letterboxd announced that the film would be one of the first exclusive films that would be made available to digitally rent for limited availability on its newly announced service feature "Letterboxd Video Store", a platform for curated unreleased independent films without distribution. It was released on the platform on December 10, 2025, and expired on January 9, 2026. [7] [8] [9]
On December 18, Neon acquired worldwide rights to the film for a theatrical release in 2026. [10]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 100% of 24 critics' reviews are positive. [11]