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Back in May, movies like "Backrooms" and "Obsession" had audiences wondering whether we're in the middle of a Gen Z horror wave. Both of those films were made on small budgets by very young directors who got their start on YouTube. Now a new movie called "It Ends" has joined their ranks. NPR's Chloee Weiner has more.
CHLOEE WEINER, BYLINE: "It Ends" begins like a road trip movie. Four friends are piled into a car, three of them have just finished college. They're helping their friend move, and they're arguing about something, well, kind of dumb.
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PHINEHAS YOON: (As James) Fifty hawks, dude with a gun, five gorillas, 10,000 rats - you're going to pick two to defend you and you're going to pick two to hunt you.
MITCHELL COLE: (As Tyler) This is really what y'all talk about now?
WEINER: What they're talking about is a meme from a few years back that set off a never-ending debate online. But Tyler, who you just heard, has more adult concerns. He joined the Army instead of attending college, and now he repairs AC units.
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NOAH TOTH: (As Fisher) All right, what about you, Tyler? How are you doing, man? How's the real world treating you?
COLE: (As Tyler) I mean, the HVAC work's pretty steady, but I'll tell you one thing. I ain't talked about gorillas and rat [expletive] in quite a while.
WEINER: They talk and drive and lose track of time. Then they realize they should have come across their turn a long, long time ago.
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YOON: (As James) I don't know of any roads that drive for six hours with no turns. We were just hunting (ph), and then we hit this dead end.
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WEINER: So they're stuck driving on an endless road, or either dead or trapped in some kind of purgatory.
ALEX ULLOM: There's a lot of horror movies where people, like, drive through the woods to get to a cabin, and that's where the horror movie takes place. And in this one, they don't even get to the cabin. They're - it's on the road.
WEINER: That's director Alex Ullom. He's 28 but started shooting "It Ends" when he was 23. He got the idea for the film during what he describes as a rough transition from college to adulthood. He graduated from Florida State University in 2020, straight into the pandemic. There was no film work to be found. Later, he realized what he was experiencing was something universal for people his age.
ULLOM: Typical structures that have existed for young people for years don't exist anymore.
WEINER: Ullom's interest in transitional spaces, like the never-ending car ride in "It Ends," has drawn a lot of comparisons to "Backrooms," a movie based on a 4chan post about exploring the eerie back areas of an office building.
ULLOM: Liminal spaces are basically a transitional space, and it feels like the transitional space is now the forever space, you know? Like, it's like, OK, something's coming, and we don't know if it's good or bad, but, like, hopefully I can pay rent.
WEINER: Ullom is aware of the "Backrooms" parallels. He and director Kane Parsons are friends. But he says some of these similarities just have to do with the experience of growing up online.
ULLOM: It's just a baked in sensibility that is caused from, you know, bumping around on the internet at 13 and watching someone's head get cut off and then going to school and, like, eating a Lunchable.
WEINER: To make money after college, Ullom was selling screenplays to strangers online for $1,000 each, and he was being paid to make memes.
ULLOM: Posted a meme online, and someone commented and was like, I would pay for more of this. So of course, I respond with all of my contact information.
WEINER: That commentator, a career magician, ended up being Ullom's first investor in "It Ends" with $10,000. Ullom got another 10K from a YouTuber friend, and a third contribution was from an investor he met playing virtual reality poker. Armed with $30,000 from the internet, Ullom began production. He cast his four leads off Instagram. That's where he came across an aspiring actor named Mitchell Cole who plays Tyler.
COLE: I was actually working on air conditioners. Service technician is the fancy title we like to call it.
WEINER: While filming Cole, now 32, balanced these two jobs.
COLE: There were some days, believe it or not, where I would get up early before I got to set and actually go help, like, with my day job, and then I would go film.
WEINER: Ullom says he wanted each of his four characters to represent a different approach to the endless road. His film has been called nihilistic, but Ullom doesn't identify with that worldview himself.
ULLOM: I think the thing that really will actually pull all of us out of this is a level of, for lack of a better word, hanging out.
WEINER: Hanging out is what saved "It Ends" too. Ullom made the film with two close friends from college. In 2025, it was picked up for distribution by Neon. Now "It Ends" is in theaters nationwide. Chloee Weiner, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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