Gen-Z filmmakers have had themselves an imprint year on the cultural landscape, as producers scour YouTube for the next 20-something to make an exceedingly lucrative film right on the heels of summer hits like Obsession and Backrooms. For writer-director Alexander Ullom, his debut feature film It Ends feels like the perfect bookend for a youthful year of generational existential exercises.
The film premiered back in 2025 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. After a niche online movement to get the film picked up, it had a short stint as the debut feature on the social media platform Letterboxd’s new streaming service, Letterboxd Video Store. That service is curated by staff members and filmmakers alike, highlighting hidden gems that have almost certainly gone under the radar. It was then picked up by the hip acquisitions team over at NEON to pack another loaded film slate.
The film follows a group of friends going on a late-night drive for some late-night grub – Cookout, I would hope – that feels like potentially the end of the road for each of them as they embark on navigating post-graduate life. We’re introduced to the cynical James (Phinehas Yoon), sharp-witted Day (Akira Jackson), soft-spoken, pessimistic Fisher (Noah Toth), and a quiet veteran named Tyler (Mitchell Cole). When their Apple Maps start to act a little funny, the group realizes that the road they’re on will not end. The opening 20 minutes are spent with the unknown, with a bunch of lost souls lurking in the woods, waiting for their car to stop.
This road is never-ending. They quickly realize that it doesn’t matter how many miles they rack up on the odometer, how much fuel their vintage eggshell-white Jeep Cherokee guzzles, or how they hydrate or eat; the only way to exist is on this dull stretch of road surrounded by woods. The group is stymied by this reality and begins to reflect on themselves as people. Disconnected from the world at large and left alone with their thoughts, a Clif Bar they’re afraid to eat, and 0.5x zoom photos turned into memes to pass the time, they’re forced to confront themselves.
I know what you may be thinking: how is this watchable? A film about a never-ending road and a never-ending drive? Sure, these concerns are valid, yet Ullom manages to create an incredibly condensed space of fear within that Jeep Cherokee, while also tying into the Gen-Z existential ideas that many 20-somethings ponder about in their $2,000-a-month studio apartments. For a generation that feels so connected, with social media dominating lives and swaying the mental health of young people – which is ill-timed with Meta recently having to issue a $17.1 billion settlement having to do with exploiting the brains of young people – each of the characters is dealing with their own personal demons as they try to deal with the repercussions of the world.
While NEON and extended marketing teams are pushing the film to be of the horror genre, It Ends feels closer to a Bong Joon-ho movie than it does a slasher. Ullom’s work feels inspired by the great critiques of late-stage capitalism and Gen-Z despair. It’s clear that the film is churning with the idea of these unplugged characters reaching a moment of peace due to their inability to connect on social media or scroll for apparel on Shein. The idea that our devices tend to just be inexplicit advertisements for the new or next thing is rich. I completely resonated with the idea that being alone with your thoughts, completely disconnected from everything, can feel like you’re a true person in that moment, not a statistic for loser tech oligarchs.
Along the lines of other debuts like Blue Heron or Obsession from this past year, this is an incredibly smart film made by young people who haven’t had much experience behind the camera, yet it feels seasoned and engrained in some sort of pre-streaming-era industry landscape where Hollywood used to throw money at the next generation and, in result, produce hits.
It Ends is exactly what a debut feature should be: tight, easy to watch, while also feeling delightfully amateurish. There are some real scares in here, and the fact that it’s clearly made by young people is especially evident in our need for language through memes, blissful cynicism, and slight entitlement. Alexander Ullom clearly has a pulse on something and will certainly be someone to watch as they, just like the never-ending road in the film, navigate what they’d like to do next.
Wyatt Allison can be found on Twitter/X @wyattartsknox and on Letterboxd @filmwyatt.
