It’s been an excellent summer for indie horror, with Obsessionand Backroomsbreaking into the mainstream, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma making its nationwide debut after a successful festival run. Now, as summer turns into fall and a chill creeps into the air, a new indie horror sensation is speeding towards the big screen. It Ends, a horror thriller about the road trip from Hell—maybe literally—will open nationwide later this week, and NEON is turning on its four-way flashers and previewing the film with a new terrifying trailer.
It Ends comes from Alexander Ullom, who wrote, directed, and edited it; the film is his feature debut. It made its debut at South by Southwest last year, where Collider’s Steve Weintraub caught up with the cast and crew; Ullom described the film as “a lot more about the emotional experience of being inside of a mystery than it is solving the mystery.”It will open nationwide on August 28, after having been released in select New York and Los Angeles theaters on August 21; it was briefly available to rent via the Letterboxd Video Store last winter.
In the trailer, four friends—Tyler (Mitchell Cole, Against the Spread), Day (Akira Jackson, Urban Flesh Eaters), Fisher (Noah Toth, Senior Prank), and James (Phinehas Yoon, Bad Teacher)—are headed on a post-graduation road trip; unfortunately, after they take a wrong turn, they get stuck on a seemingly endless road to nowhere. They never get tired, they never get hungry, and they never run out of gas. They’re largely alone on the trip…unless they venture outside their car, in which case they’re soon besieged by a murderous mob. Are they in Hell? Some alternate dimension? Or is it simply the road to nowhere…and if it is, what happens once they get there? You’ll have to get to the theater this weekend to find out. Don’t drive there, though—after you see the movie, you’ll wish you’d taken the bus.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
Advertisement
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
Advertisement
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
Advertisement
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
Advertisement
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
Advertisement
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
Advertisement
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
Advertisement
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
Advertisement
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
Advertisement
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Advertisement
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Advertisement
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
Advertisement
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
Advertisement
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
Advertisement
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
Advertisement
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
Advertisement
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Advertisement
What Are the Critics Saying About ‘It Ends’?
It Ends currently holds a stellar 94% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 77 reviews. In his review, Collider’s Matthew Donato praised it, calling it “a winning experiment that treads lightly regarding horror influences.”
It Ends is now playing in select theaters in New York City and Los Angeles; it opens nationwide on August 28. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login