Life is a Liminal Highway
Alexander Ullom's It Ends is a surprisingly relevant tale of nihilism and persistence after you find out the world you were promised isn't the one you're living in.
Spoilers follow for It Ends (2025)
Everything starts the way it’s supposed to. We’re introduced to four high school friends, Tyler, James, Day, and Fisher, who’ve reunited for a road trip. As they argue about stupid shit–just how many hawks could a man take in a fight?--we get to know them just enough, the way you do at the beginning of a movie. They tease James for a bathroom selfie wearing a tie at his new office job, rib Tyler for a pumpkin patch-induced breakup. We know how this works. These are our characters; after this little bit of introduction we will follow them into some horrifying experience. It’s just a question of when it will begin.
Ah yes, here are the first hints that something is wrong. The GPS insists they are on the right road but they haven’t seen any other cars. Wasn’t there supposed to be a turn a while back? When Tyler finally insists they turn around and head back towards the highway, things get weird. The road they came in on just stops, suddenly turns into forest. As they argue about whether they’ve missed a turn, James spots something in the woods. A person? And then they swarm, suddenly, fiendishly, a mob of people come screaming, running for the car. The foursome barely escapes. What is happening? Why is it happening?
Right, this is how it goes, and now we will spend the next hour discovering what the horror is and finding a way to escape. That is how these stories work. The explanation may be clear or it may stay vague, the escape may claim a few lives before they make it out. But there are rules to these things, tropes to expect. These four friends will clash but they will bond, they will come out stronger.
But what if that’s not how this story works? What if all the stories we’ve been told are wrong? What if the whole world we’ve been promised, the life we’re supposed to be working towards, is nothing but an endless, unchanging road?
