Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Alexander Ullom, ‘It Ends‘ follows four friends, James, Day, Fisher, and Tyler, on a journey with no discernible beginning or end, as they find themselves stuck on a never-ending road. They are not the only ones there either, as a dazed crowd always seems to stay on their tail, desperate to get into the car for reasons unknown. Gradually, the miles pile up, and the friends are left with no choice but to face the impossibility of the situation and respond to it in kind. By the end of this road horror thriller film, the four friends are left unrecognizable from their past selves, unable to even determine if their transformation has happened for the better or for the worse. SPOILERS AHEAD.
It Ends Plot Synopsis
‘It Ends’ begins with James, Day, and Fisher getting picked up by their friend, Tyler, for one last road trip before they go their separate ways. Newly graduated, all four friends have some plans about their future, but James soon becomes the center of discussion as he is moving to a new place. From there, the conversation turns into an argument about a meme post about which animals one should pick when trying to defend themselves. Before anyone can realize it, however, the environment seemingly shifts, and very soon the friends find themselves on an unrecognizable road with no turns. When Tyler tries to turn back, he is met with a forest stretch blocking the path.
To make things worse, a swarm of people attacks the group, desperately asking to be let into the car. Though the group eventually escapes their clutches and drives forward, they realize, to their utter dismay, that the road seemingly has no end. To make things even more confusing, the car doesn’t run out of fuel even after hundreds of miles, and none of the friends feel hunger, thirst, or the need to sleep. As this inexplicable phenomenon becomes their norm, they use a timer to determine that they can be out of the truck for 90 seconds before a horde catches up to them. Initially believing that they are being divinely punished, the group confesses to their secrets, but nothing changes, forcing them to keep driving.
After more than 50,000 miles, Tyler gives up and decides to remain in the forest, leaving the rest to continue without him. Over time, Day and Fisher settle into a grim routine, taking things from abandoned cars, repeating the same conversations, and screaming each day to relieve their frustration. James, however, refuses to participate in this ritual and single-mindedly searches for a way out. By 835,000 miles, however, Day and Fisher have had enough and remove the keys while the car is stopped, begging James to accept that there may be no escape. Still adamant, he forcibly takes the keys back, restarts the engine, and drives away, leaving Day and Fisher behind in tears.
It Ends Ending: Does James Make it to the End? Does He Return Home?
While James technically makes it to the end of the road in ‘It Ends,’ that only brings him farther from the real world than ever. After more than a million miles, the road greets him with a cluster of cars blocking the pathway ahead, and walking past them, he reaches an asphalt patch encircled by abandoned cars, most of them really old, and others new. Unlike how the starting point of the road is blocked by a dense forest, its end is blocked with cars that possibly belong to others who drove up to that point sometime in the past. In effect, James is left with the choice of either settling there for good or turning back to restart his journey, and this predicament ultimately breaks him.
Though we are never given a proper explanation as to what the road is, and whether its end even means anything, in some ways it can be interpreted as a metaphor for modern adult life itself. The story notes early on that the friends are fresh undergraduates and that James is heading out for a new life in a new city. When Day, Fisher, and Tyler joke about how unlike himself James looks in the pictures from his new apartment, it is really a comment about how life will soon shape him and others in an unrecognizable form. It is their collective fear about moving onto that form of life that manifests in the form of an unending road, one that doesn’t allow them to budge from this one spatiotemporal phase.
In the end, James realizes that his hopes about the journey having a meaningful end were all in vain. In reality, there is no home for him to return to, as “home” in this case is a new apartment in a new city, a future that he is wholly unprepared to deal with. Where in real life, many toil away in the hopes of a better tomorrow, James ultimately embraces the unending impossibility of the road and chooses to drive back. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the myth of Sisyphus, who is eternally punished to carry a boulder up the hill, only to watch it roll down every time. Just as Sisyphus’ journey can be interpreted as a parable for life, James’ journey presents a similar idea, contrasting with many other possibilities.
What Happens to Day, Fisher, and Tyler?
Unlike James, who doesn’t let go of the wheel even after finding the finish line, Day, Fisher, and Tyler have varying responses to the road’s seemingly unending nature. That said, we don’t get an update on where they are by the end of the movie, and whether they are even alive is up for debate. Since this world seemingly strips people of their mortal limits, such as the need to sleep, eat, or drink, it is entirely possible that they are rendered immortal too. Thus, while many might be pushed to take their own lives in the face of such a hopeless phenomenon, it might simply be impossible to do so. That explains the many dazed or semi-conscious people we see along the road and also raises the possibility that the remaining friends are still alive somewhere.
Assuming that Day, Fisher, and Tyler choose to stay close to the road, there is a good chance that James might eventually run into them again. However, whether they remain their usual selves or get morphed into the horde of people who want a ride can only be proven if and when they are seen again. That said, a person’s temperament possibly plays a role in this as well. Tyler, for instance, is the first to give up in the battle for control and decides to treat the forest by the road as his new home. Day and Fisher, by contrast, get out of the car after a protracted disillusionment rather than making peace with this world, believing that there is no end to the road. It is very likely that this distinction dictates how one ends up, even if it’s all the same in the face of the road’s sheer uncaring nature.
Why Does James Ask the Man About Hawks?
On his return trip, James picks up a semi-conscious man who was seemingly driving all by himself, before ditching his car. When he wakes up in the passenger seat, James curiously asks him the same question about which 2 animal sets he will choose to defend himself. To his surprise, the man agrees with his picks, and the conversation ends as casually as it began. Beneath this simple question, however, lies the thematic core of ‘It Ends,’ and it culminates in James at last finding a person who is on the same wavelength with him. While the first half of the trip may have been about unearthing the subtle differences and cracks in their friend circle, the journey back can bring James a new friendship, one built on a shared perspective on the world.
While the question about animals may be more of a meme for the friends at first, in hindsight, it carries a much deeper meaning. When asking about which animals they would pick to defend themselves, James, Day, Fisher, and Tyler are really just picking their symbolic allies. Going even further, when any two of them pick different animals, their debates pit them into a hypothetical violent confrontation, foreshadowing the paths they would eventually take. The endless road, as such, can also be interpreted as one such life-or-death situation, and though James loses touch with his friends, likely forever, in the end, he finds a new one to continue the journey with.
Is the Road Real? Is Everyone Already Dead?
Despite the symbolic and thematic messages the road may be trying to convey, its physical impossibility remains a difficult-to-understand question. It’s not only the fact that the road is unimaginably long, but that it forces everyone on it to become a human in a sense, losing their sense of hunger, thirst, sleep, and tiredness. Instead, the humans are all reduced to a more abstract form, either turning into a mob-like swarm or people who effectively turn anhedonic. While the easiest explanation for this phenomenon is that the road is some form of purgatory, where souls are trapped for all eternity and made to go through endless punishments, that might not be the case.
The theory that the road might be a manifestation of hell is brought up very early on by the teens, leading them to even confess their darkest secrets in the hopes of being absolved. However, what makes the road less of a punishment, and more of an uncaring geographical entity, is the fact that it does have hints of personality. At roughly 835,000 miles, for instance, the landscape changes and the car momentarily stops working. Then, at more than a million miles, the place begins to rain, suggesting that new happenings are indeed possible in this reality, but they are simply stretched out at a level that is hard for humans to make sense of.
The question of whether the road represents the afterlife is also built upon the idea that the friends are already dead, and here, we don’t have enough information to make a guess as to how they might have passed away. While everyone, even Tyler, suspects at one point that they may have gotten into an accident and already died, the story does not substantiate that claim at any point. As such, the question of how they ended up on this road is ultimately rendered pointless, as the thing it most effectively mimics is life itself, in all its mundanity, circularity, and yearning for purpose even where there might not be any.
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