A Horror Movie That Actually Feels Like Real Horror
Alexander Ullom takes four friends, an endless road and one terrifyingly simple question: what happens when there is nowhere left to go? The deeper It Ends travels into its nightmare, the more frighteningly familiar it becomes.
By MIGUEL MATEO | SEPTEMBER 3, 2026
Four recent college graduates head out for food after a night together and somehow end up on a two-lane road with no exit. They keep driving, but there is no destination. When they stop, the woods around them become dangerous. It is a simple setup, and Alexander Ullom stretches it into something increasingly suffocating.
What makes It Ends work so well is how quickly the road stops feeling like a gimmick. The longer these friends are trapped there, the more the movie starts to resemble the anxieties that come with stepping into adulthood and realizing nobody can tell you exactly where life is going. They can keep moving, but that does not mean they are getting anywhere. They can look to the people beside them for reassurance, but those people may be just as lost.
That uncertainty is where the horror becomes especially effective.
There are scary moments throughout, and Ullom knows how to use the darkness surrounding the road, but the lasting terror comes from the emotional exhaustion of the situation. These characters are forced to keep making decisions without knowing whether any of them matter. Eventually, the question becomes less about escape and more about what each person is willing to hold onto when hope starts to wear thin.
The friendship between the four leads gives the emotional connection a film like this needs. They feel like people who have known each other long enough to have inside jokes, old frustrations and a natural rhythm together. That matters because the movie gradually tests what friendship means when everyone starts reacting to the same nightmare in different ways. Some want to keep pushing forward. Some are tired. Some are scared of being left behind. Those differences become more painful as the film goes on.
There is something deeply sad about watching friendship become another source of fear. These people clearly love each other, which makes every disagreement and every moment of distance hurt more. The road keeps stretching ahead even as the group begins to fracture.
Ullom also wisely avoids overexplaining what any of this means. The road can be read as depression, grief, adulthood, routine, fear of the future or simply the feeling of being stuck while everyone else seems to be moving ahead. The film leaves enough room for all of those readings to exist.
That ambiguity gives the ending more power. It Ends understands how frightening it can be to keep going when there is no proof that things will get better. It also understands why people keep going anyway.
By the time the film reaches its final stretch, the mechanics of the road matter far less than the people trapped on it. The impossible situation has become painfully familiar. It Ends is the rare horror film that finds terror in uncertainty itself, and its most unsettling idea is also its simplest: sometimes the scariest thing is having no choice but to keep moving, even when nobody knows where the road is leading or whether an end even exists.
Rating: ★★★★ out of ★★★★★
In Theaters Everywhere
Directed by Alexander Ullom | Written by Alexander Ullom | Starring Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, Mitchell Cole