Movie Review: Gen Z gets a moody, existential horror in ‘It Ends’

Every generation deserves its own postgrad malaise movie. Not every attempt is going to be “The Graduate” or “Frances Ha,” but even when they’re mediocre, they’re also often a pure expression from a young filmmaker about what their contemporaries are feeling at that exact moment.

Though the details may change — the clothes, the hairstyles, the gadgets, the soundtrack — the vibe kind of stays the same even in a high concept horror like “It Ends,” in which four friends find themselves on an endless road to nowhere. It’s kind of reassuring, unlike, say, the encroaching doom of adulthood.

“It Ends” was written and directed by Alexander Ullom, who graduated from college during the pandemic and is open about how he struggled with dissociative depression. You don’t need to know this to watch the film, but it makes sense once you’ve met James (Phinehas Yoon). He’s the rational and inquisitive one whose seen-it-all-already jadedness about his future is its own kind of poison.

Somehow, however, he hasn’t alienated his high school friends. They still like him enough to help him move into his new apartment (which is, by all accounts, super depressing). We meet them as they all cram into a white Jeep Cherokee to find some food. Tyler (Mitchell Cole) is driving, and Fisher (Noah Toth) is leading a spirited discussion about which animals they’d pick to defend them (10,000 rats, 50 hawks, one man with a gun, or five gorillas etc., etc.). It was, apparently, a popular meme for a time. Day (Akira Jackson) is navigating with her phone’s maps app and wondering whether she could choose gorillas trained to use guns as a loophole.

Tyler is the outlier in this group, the one who didn’t go to college. He went into the military and has been working for some time in HVAC. He’s even talking about wanting to get married sooner rather than later. And he’s the only one with a discernable Southern accent (they’re apparently in Florida).

The others are all just out of college and really feeling it. Day is ambling around on job search sites, trying to put her graphic design degree to work. James has an entry level engineering job and his future all mapped out (although the way he describes his inevitable life in a Midwestern city in which he’s married with kids and making six figures sounds like a death sentence). He’d rather, he says, be in a medically induced coma hooked up to “oxy serotonin” cocktails. Personally, I prefer Noah Baumbach’s line from “Kicking and Screaming” about wishing they were just retiring after a lifetime of hard work to the drugged out coma thought, but I long ago aged out of the postgrad demo.

Is it believable that these four would have stayed friends in high school and beyond? Not really, especially Tyler. But there needs to be a few different types to handle their new predicament of seemingly being stuck forever on a country road in this Jeep. Some hope in vain for a way out. Some are content to pass the time as happily and aimlessly as they can (learn dances, tell jokes, scream sometimes). James just wants to understand. And then there’s the question of the zombielike people in the woods who attack when they stop for more than 90 seconds, which is good for a few jump scares. The metaphors might not be especially subtle, but the film does have a kind of hypnotic appeal.

With its minimalist approach, “It Ends” almost feels like a pandemic-era production. It’s a neat concept that wears a little thin after a while, but it’s a movie that shows promise not only in Ullom’s ability to create a sustained, ominous mood, but in his eye for casting a group of talented and essentially unknown actors.

Ullom’s bio says that he “makes films for anyone going through stuff.” And Gen Z, like all the generations before them and all the generations after, are certainly in the thick of “going through stuff.” Maybe “It Ends” is just what they need.

“It Ends,” a Neon release in New York and Los Angeles on Friday and nationwide Aug. 28, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “pervasive language.” Running time: 89 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.