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).
