Naman Shrestha
Written and directed by Alexander Ullom in his directorial debut, ‘It Ends’ is a horror drama movie that centers on a group of recently graduated friends — James, Day, Fisher, and Tyler — who go on a late-night drive to hang out and have one last meal together before they go their separate ways. Before they even reach their destination, the friends find themselves driving around in circles on a never-ending highway in their Jeep Cherokee.
They soon realize that they are not alone on the two-lane roads, as they encounter the mysterious terrors lurking in the woods surrounding them. With some difficult choices to make, the four friends must choose between accepting their new existence and putting up a fight to find an escape from the infinite highway filled with unfathomable evil. In the psychological thriller film, the never-ending roads and their Jeep are where most of the story unfolds, with both serving as the driving force that determines the fate of the four friends.
It Ends Filming Locations
Production on ‘It Ends’ took place entirely in Florida, specifically in Tallahassee and Gainesville. According to the filmmaker, Alexander Ullom, he and the rest of his cast and crew shot the film a total of three times — the first time seemingly around October 2022, the second time around June 2023, and the last time around May 2024. Each time, the shooting process lasted about 20 days. In an interview, Ullom claimed that about a couple of scenes from the first shoot in 2022 are still in the final cut of the movie.
Tallahassee, Florida
The majority of ‘It Ends’ was lensed in Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city. In particular, the filming unit made the most of the virtual production facility in Florida State University, located at 222 South Copeland Street, to record all the interior car scenes. They reportedly plasma-cut the Jeep into parts as it didn’t fit through the door, and then reassembled it on the sound stage. Taping inside the virtual facility also came with its own set of challenges, such as the constant need to stabilize the background. Explaining how they made it work, the director told Filmmaker, “The film has a huge time jump, so there’s either first half or second half scenes. First half, the takes can rattle off a bit more because it’s more close up and kinetic.”
He added, “If it was a peaceful scene, we were locked off and wider, and there’s more of the car. I would only get one set-up per actor. If we had time, we would get a lot of other coverage. We blocked everything production-wise by time of day. If there was a morning scene, we were knocking out every single morning scene, because the lighting adjustments and plates would take the smallest amount of time to change. It was more shot design and less coverage. It’s much easier to shoot the thriller stuff because it’s right here (as a closeup) and there’s less to light. Last addendum: if we had a really intense screaming scene, we would not put that next to a fun scene. (The actors) would have to come down after that. That took main priority.”
Despite the low budget, the makers managed to use the Volume tech and set the lighting exactly as they wanted in each scene. Elaborating on that, Alexander Ullon told Collider, “We got so lucky that Florida State, all of a sudden, just built one right at the time we were trying to make this thing and needed someone to help figure it out a little bit. The best part is you can do blue hour for, like, a full day. There are full scenes that are in blue hour. It’s awesome. We just got really lucky that they let us use that.” As for shooting the on-location portions, the production team called it a challenging yet fun process.
“It would just be this long stretch with forest on both sides. We would just be hanging out, and we’d be in the trenches,” Phinehas Yoon told Collider. He also described the contrast between taping on location on actual roads in and around Tallahassee and on the sound stage. “It’s like being in the trenches on set. It was so insane because it’s so unpredictable. But then you’d be on the sound stage, and it’d be nice, and you’d have AC, but we’d also be there for 12 hours a day in this car. I’d be doing a scene as James and I’d look over, and I’d see Evan Barber on the floor with the rope connected to the Jeep,” he added.
Gainesville, Florida
Apart from Tallahassee, the production team of ‘It Ends’ also reportedly taped plenty of pivotal exterior sequences in and around the city of Gainesville. From what we can tell, they set up camp around the wooded areas of Gainesville to depict the scenes that unfold on the infinite highway. In an interview with Dread Central, Alexander Ullom was asked about his decision to shoot the film in Florida. He explained, “The main reason we shot in Florida is that’s where our resources were and where we got a free equipment package. Then it was also just where we could pull favors. I would’ve loved to have shot this in some sort of Seattle, Northwestern Big Tree, but we didn’t have the resources for that. And the Florida woods were fine. The Florida woods are just a lot more hostile. I almost clicked on a rattlesnake one time.”
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