It Ends uses an endless road and horror imagery to explore how young people today, left with collapsed structures, cope with a liminal state by creating rituals and seeking connection.

Director Alexander Ullom's It Ends blends horror with a hangout movie: four recent graduates drive onto a road that never ends, and whenever they stop to catch their breath, they get ninety seconds of peace before screaming crowds swarm them.

The film is less about scaring you than about meditating on growing up.

1. Liminal states: we're living in a giant in-between

Ullom argues that young people's fear of infinity and liminal spaces isn't really religious — it's that there's no destination to arrive at anymore. Family, home ownership, faith: the pillars that used to hold society together have dissolved, leaving an emptiness.

It's like sitting in an airport terminal: not a destination, not home, just a long transition.

2. Rituals and silly questions: ways to fight meaninglessness

The characters invent rituals: screaming to expel fear, sharing memes to relax the mind, dancing to break free from capitalism's exploitation of emotion.

Ullom says that in an age without religion, silly questions like 'who would win, a bear or a gorilla?' become a spiritual battleground, and arguing them connects people against the absurd.

3. Growing up isn't defeating a monster, it's learning to just stay

James wants a conclusive ending, like a genre hero defeating the conflict. But adulthood isn't a quest; it's a scramble in the mud, pulling meaning from wherever you can.

In the film, Fisher and Day choose to just hang out together; James drives off alone. Ullom says learning to be with others is the cure for this transitional period.

One line: in horror, the win isn't fighting back — it's learning to be with people in the dark.