Sometimes taking a wrong turn means adding ten minutes to your drive. Sometimes it apparently means driving forever.
After making its debut at SXSW in 2025, acclaimed horror thriller It Ends arrives in U.S. theaters today, August 21, bringing its seemingly simple but increasingly nightmarish road trip to the big screen courtesy of NEON.
Written and directed by Alexander Ullom in his feature directorial debut, It Ends follows four friends whose late-night drive takes an impossible turn. Recent graduates James, Day and Fisher reconnect with their friend Tyler and head out together, only to find themselves traveling down a two-lane forest road that doesn't appear to have an end.
Turning around doesn't help. Neither does stopping.
The group soon discovers that something is waiting beyond the road, with frantic figures emerging from the surrounding woods whenever they stop. Their Jeep quickly becomes the closest thing they have to safety, forcing the friends to keep driving as the miles continue piling up with seemingly no destination ahead.
Then things get even stranger.
Fuel doesn't seem to disappear. Hunger and exhaustion stop working the way they should. The road continues stretching forward, and the group is left trying to understand where they are, what rules this place follows and whether escaping it is even possible.
That's where It Ends starts becoming more than another "friends stranded somewhere creepy" horror movie. The endless highway creates a cosmic nightmare where simply surviving isn't necessarily the biggest question. What happens when there may be nothing left to survive for?
The film stars Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth and Mitchell Cole, with Ullom also serving as writer and editor. At a tight 1 hour and 29 minutes, the R-rated film takes its characters from post-college uncertainty into something considerably more existential.
It Ends originally premiered at South by Southwest on March 7, 2025, before receiving a digital rental release through the Letterboxd Video Store later that year. Now, more than a year after its festival debut, the film is getting its U.S. theatrical run through NEON.
And if an infinite stretch of asphalt, unexplained rules and cosmic forces lurking somewhere beyond the tree line already have you curious, this feels like one where knowing less going in is probably the better experience.
It Ends is playing in U.S. theaters now.
Maybe just stick to the GPS on the drive home.
