“In the Face of Nihilism” | Alex Ullom, It Ends
A group of recent grads head out on a late night drive for grub, hoping to enjoy one final hangout before their paths diverge. Instead, they accidentally turn onto a never-ending, two-lane hellscape surrounded by untold horrors and cosmic forces beyond their understanding. Cramped together inside a Jeep Cherokee and with the miles stretching infinitely ahead, they face a choice: embrace their new existence or fight to escape it.
Screening Sunday, May 4, at 7:00 p.m., at the Music Box Theatre, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival, with writer-director Alex Ullom in attendance for a post-film Q&A, It Ends is a subversive, thrillingly existential feature debut that soars on the strengths of not only its writing and direction but the performances of Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Mitchell Cole, the four breakout stars at its center.
Ahead of the screening, Ullom graciously took the time to answer this year’s CCFF filmmaker questionnaire. Below, his individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
Apologies to the reader in advance for this word count; on re-read, I realized I might’ve treated this like too much of a diary entry. Feel free to skip to the end; it’s mostly trauma dumping and self-aggrandizing.
Since I was a kid, I had always forced my family to sit through awful action-figure/stuffed-toy Hi-8 videos, but I never saw it as a real career. My mother is an immigrant and my father was born in the West Virginian hills “opioid capital” of the US—they both spent their whole lives pulling themselves out of poverty so they were understandably bummed out/terrified when I decided to drop my computer science degree to dive into the instability of moviemaking. The transition into adulthood was a pretty brutal battle with mental health for me (I get into that in the next question), so when I presented a Powerpoint to my parents about how film would lead to the most amount of serotonin release over time, they had no choice but to let me control my college fund.
I transferred into Florida State’s film program and met my lifelong friends and collaborators Carrie Carusone and Evan Barber, both of whom would eventually produce IT ENDS. Film school isn’t a necessity by any means, but I needed the education and peers since my cinematic knowledge up until that point was embarrassing YouTube sketches.
How this film came to be: After graduating into the pandemic and moving home degree-in-hand, I scoured the internet for any gig that was tangentially related to “film.” This ranged anywhere from being paid to make memes on r/wallstreetbets during the GameStop fiasco to wheeling and dealing biographical screenplays to strangers about themselves on Upwork for $1000. (Also a short stint of writing copy for what was essentially a MLM scheme.) Regardless, my team and I always knew that the indie feature was the future—just as all our heroes had done before us.
Florida State had developed an “Alumni Package” of free equipment, which let us pool our tiny resources to pay our friends instead of pouring out for rentals. Financing was its own journey, but round one was financed by four OG sources: a career magician who commented “I would pay for more of this” on one of my comedy sketches and meant it; a close friend who believed in me and had a fat tax return; a man I met after constantly queuing into different high-roller VR Poker lobbies to pitch the film; and “Spark The Arts”, a film fund set up to honor the memory of one of our film school peers, run by his parents. (That loss ties closely into the themes of our film and is the driving force behind our desire to get this film out; see next question.)
This is way too long, stick with me, sorry: We shot in 2022, and my idiotic hubris of attempting to pace for longer than 20 minutes for the first time with a script written by a 22-year-old finally caught up with me: The film didn’t work. Strikes hit and, to survive, three of us bunkered into a 1BR. We started selling shares of the film to finance pickups, and began editing/screening constantly to my captive friends and acquaintances. We were eventually able to fix gaps in arc and emotional continuity to make what was—imo—a so-so functioning movie. Out hunting post-financing, we got offers from generous FSU alumni with bigger networks for conditional EP credits if they landed us the cash. (I would’ve given them director credits at this point.) During that process, we met Snoot Entertainment, who agreed the film could be even better with another round of reshoots. By then, I was 26 and, with real resources from Snoot, we reshot 75% of the movie and built the version it is now.
So… film path-wise: it was luck, delusion, and the best community and friends on earth that has somehow pulled us through to the finish line. I am incredibly grateful to every human being that helped get us here, and even more grateful for anyone who read this entire hideous text wall.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
Still trying to figure out how personal to get in these types of things, and how to express why my younger self wrote this film. I’ve changed so much in the last five years that, when I look back at the life events that inspired it, it feels like it wasn’t real—like how I imagine the guy in Castaway probably feels when he thinks back to the island as he’s enjoying a steak dinner or whatever he does post-island life.
When I turned 18, a lot of life events and mental health imbalances combined into a long period of dissociative depression to welcome me into adulthood. I had lost my faith, structure, and self-identity, and I fell into a spiral of endless days curled in bed, unable to make it to class or recognize my face in a mirror. During this time, I fearfully dove into all types of philosophical musings (I keep hearing the film being called “Gen-Z Sartre,” but I actually came to his stuff much later in life, Victor Frankl as well) and read all religious texts, searching for a string of words to fix my brain. I moved through life with a functioning numbness, and besides the chemical enjoyment of eating fast food, saw no reason to stick around for the rest of it. I was on the endless road, moving forward only by accident and without reason.
One day, after I’m accidentally invited to a social event, a friend mentions he thinks a silverback gorilla could somehow kill a grizzly bear in a one-versus-one. Being the rational one, I disagree and explain how the 500-pound difference and claws would result in a wash for the bear. Our argument spirals upwards, and we begin shouting at each other, him somehow convinced that the gorilla could execute an arm-bar or chokehold because of its dexterity (fucking idiotic). In this moment, I remember being thrust into presence, realizing how long it had been since I was truly in my body and enjoying life.
I was suddenly overwhelmed with tears—which made my friend back off, thinking the argument was way too important to me—and enjoyed this small moment of joy before it left me. After internalizing, I decided that conversation, other people, and sometimes even food was reason enough to stick around—a realization many people have had before me, but one I needed to live to understand.
It’s not a method that works across the board, but it’s one that I—as well as our lead character James—experienced, and one that I am excited to share. Although the other three leads form their own, separate valid opinions on the road, James’ is one I lived. I won’t go too into the themes past this, but this transition into who I am now was the inception of a film that starts scary and ends with quiet optimism in the face of nihilism. My life was an endless slew of misery and suffering, made brighter by small moments of joy and connection—kind of like if the family in Hereditary had tried to enjoy a game of chutes and ladders. (There are other elements in play that excited me to make the film, specifically the character battle between a plot-driven-constant-conflict-resolution genre film, and the ennui of a conversational scene about memes, but this long-winded story was the emotional inspiration.)
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
Four films inspired It Ends:
1.) Linklater’s Slacker. Someone posted a rip onto YouTube that I would incessantly watch and listen to, sometimes even as a podcast to fall asleep to. I would try to imagine the faces of the different characters, and to imagine their lives outside of the film. It was the first movie I saw that showed me that literally nothing matters on screen besides the people. Film was communication, and hearing people talk was just that. The indie spirit of it was nice, too.
2.) I was very sheltered until I was around 9, and I didn’t know adult media existed that wasn’t Veggie Tales. (Nothing wrong with that; Veggie Tales slaps). For whatever reason, one day, my father decided that it was time for me to become a man, so he rented me Reservoir Dogs. It was my first actual “film film” ever and definitely left an imprint. The horror genre now is sort of how crime was in the 90s: A commercial framework to play with tone and craft. Reservoir Dogs was kind of like a hangout crime film, one more focused on the characters than the plot reveals/turns of the crime itself. It’s definitely imprinted on my childhood subconscious in more ways than are probably healthy, which I’m grateful for.
3.) From a craft perspective, the Safdies’ Good Time showed me that a high-concept thriller can work on a budget if you put the camera in the face of a performance you work in tandem with. Their philosophical approach to filmmaking is also one I live by. Working with non-actors, first-timers, the grit and “criminal mindset” (their words, not mine) one must take on when trying to get a movie made, their Cassevetes approach to character and camera work. They’re the blueprint.
4.) Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop. Best road movie of all time. A film that I didn’t understand the meaning of until the literal final frame, when it finally presents it. This movie is goated. Also tossing The Bad News Bears (1976) in here because I can. Another goated childhood movie, and my all-time favorite.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
I mentioned it before, but the one-bedroom apartment that my friends/producers and I operated/lived out of for the last three years, constantly cut screening on a 5.1 surround system we rigged together. This place is a one-to-one of the Jeep the characters get stuck in for eternity: markings on walls, furniture constantly rearranged to make it inhabitable. I’ve probably missed out on years of Vitamin D from the sun in this place, but I’m eternally grateful for cheap rent in LA while cobbling this film together, cutting down monthly overheads to focus on the film. We’ve screened to like 11 people at once in this cramped living room. Apologies to my neighbors. Hold your pity: I fit a 65-inch TV into a converted closet bedroom, so it honestly isn’t that bad living like Harry Potter (but eventually his life got better, or whatever).
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience.
You kind of have to be a closeted Nolan fan in film school, but the hype as a teenager going into the midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises was insane. Also had a recent Vidiots screening of Battle Royale in LA that was amazing. Thanks for reading all this btw.