“It Ends” When You Learn to Let People Go

Disguised as a cosmic highway horror, Alexander Ullom’s It Ends is a beautiful, albeit terrifying, metaphor for learning that if you want to survive adulthood and become your own person, you have to learn to let people go. The never-ending highway, populated by lost and desperate people who attack the protagonists’ car in hopes of salvation, represents what happens when we refuse to accept that some relationships have run their course. The longer we hold on to people who are no longer meant to be part of our lives, the longer we remain stuck in the same place, going nowhere. At its core, the movie is about the painful realization that the friends who were part of your life growing up are not necessarily the people who will be with you into adulthood. 

The movie follows four recent college graduates, James(Phinehas Yoon), Day(Akira Jackson), Fisher(Noah Toth), and Tyler(Mitchell Cole), on a late-night food run, hoping to enjoy one last casual hangout before life pulls them in different directions. They all have their own paths ahead of them, paths that will inevitably separate them anyway. But one wrong turn traps them on a two-lane highway that stretches on indefinitely. Their car never runs out of gas, their phones never die, and they never seem to get hungry or tired. Time itself appears to have stopped. They soon discover that they have to keep driving because, whenever they stop for too long, desperate people emerge from the darkness and try to steal their car. These people were once in the same situation as the protagonists, but at some point, for one reason or another, they stopped, and now they are trapped in an endless search for a way out.

As the journey goes on, the four friends are forced to confront the fact that their friendship has run its course. Except for James, who becomes increasingly obsessed with understanding what is happening and finding a way out, the others eventually give up and step out of the car, leaving their friends behind. In a way, they are doing what James cannot: accepting that sometimes there is nothing left to hold on to, and that continuing to do so will only keep you trapped. The tragedy is that they have to make this decision without knowing what awaits them outside the car as they literally step into the unknown, just as we can never really know what comes after letting go of people who have been part of our lives for years.

Ullom has chosen the perfect young actors for these characters. Their chemistry makes the slow death of this friendship feel almost palpable in the claustrophobic confines of the car, as they drive for days, months, and eventually years. They capture the way relationships change as we grow older, how people who once felt like an essential part of our lives can slowly become strangers, even when we still share the same memories. The conversations about the past, the music, the photographs, and the stories they tell each other become increasingly sad when you realize that these are people desperately trying to hold on to something that no longer exists. 

What I find most interesting about the movie is the way it reframes the idea of giving up. When Day, Fisher, and Tyler decide to open the door and step out into the unknown, it might seem like they are admitting defeat. But I think their decision is also about accepting that they cannot keep living this way forever. James, on the other hand, refuses to let go. His obsession with finding a logical explanation for their situation becomes a metaphor for the way we sometimes cling to friendships simply because we cannot accept that they are over. He keeps driving, looking for an exit, convinced that there must be a way to save everyone, when the real problem is his inability to accept that people grow apart and friendships end.

It Ends is about the difficulty of letting people go, especially when they have been such an important part of your life. It is about understanding that not every friendship is meant to last forever, no matter how much history you share or how badly you want things to stay the same. And while letting go can feel like giving up on something that once meant everything to you, sometimes holding on is what prevents you from moving forward. Growing up means learning that you can love and cherish the people who were part of your past without needing them to be part of your future.