After making a splash at his SXSW Premier, Alex Ullom brings his debut feature It Ends to Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival. The story follows four college friends stuck in a car that is forced to drive down a never ending road. As each one reckons with their fate in unique ways, their choices reveal the depths of their characters.
Ullom’s story never dips into cynicism. The characters never lecture the audience about philosophy, and the drama does not feel manufactured solely to move the plot forward. Ullom and his collective of filmmaker friends (at this screening, he was accompanied by producers Carrie Carusone and Evan Barber) made sure that the characters were fully formed, resulting in a darkly funny script. “Alex would find a lot of the writing sometimes in his conversations with the actors,” explained Carusone during the Q&A after the screening. Each of the four actors (Mitchell Cole, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Phinehas Yoon) deliver pitch perfect performances that will stay with the audience long after the film ends.
Behind the Scenes: Crafting It Ends
Ullom, Carusone and Barber shared extensive details about the work that went into making It Ends with the Fantasia audience. A mental health situation in college sparked the idea for the film’s central theme (“talking to other people and conversation, that was kind of what saved me,” he said). He and his producers would then spend the next six years working and re-working the film. Leveraging local resources in Florida provided them with access to a soundstage, where they shot all the interior scenes. The initial 2022 shoot felt lacking, so they went back and reshot about 40% of the film. They showed different cuts to random people to gauge what worked and what didn’t, and they sold producer credits to whomever offered enough financing to reach the next milestone. “I always pitched [the film] as if Linklater made a horror movie,” joked producer Evan Barber during the Q&A.
The final cut (which also has an incredible sound design!) offers audiences a compassionate exploration of our own ongoing existential crisis. It Ends is not only a triumph of independent filmmaking, it’s a beacon of hope in a world where our options are limited by forces beyond our control.