Alice Oscura – Featured Writer
Warning SPOILERS Ahead
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a psychological drama/thriller written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. He wrote films such as Being John Malkovich (1999) and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004) so he is no stranger to the genre. However, there is a huge difference between being cerebral and just plain giving someone a whiplash in trying to keep up with the storyline being depicted on the screen.
The story is about a young woman (Jessie Buckley) who takes a road trip with her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) in order to meet his parents in a remotely located farm. The young woman is at university study studying quantum physics. The lead characters are extremely awkward around each other and the young woman constantly talks in her head, which is not bad at first until you realise that she does it for the majority of the film. Another issue that I had was the dialogue. The vocabulary is not relatable, and it is awfully hard to pull your focus when you cannot understand the definition for at least 75 percent of what is being said. Their conversation in the car is so cold and the characters suffer from a gigantic sense of melancholy and depression.
Jake’s parents are even more strange. Toni Collette (Hereditary, Knives Out) and David Thewlis (Ares in Wonder Woman) seem to be genuinely loving parents but, Jake seems to be put off at any physical affection from his mother and gets increasingly aggressive towards them as the evening progresses. Then, things exceedingly move towards being in an episode of the Twilight Zone when Jake’s parents ages kept switching and the young woman’s name, profession and how she met Jake kept changing. Cerebral, psychological? I do not think so. It is what I call a gigantic mess! A mess that lasts over two hours of what felt like utter torture to me in my opinion.
Look, I enjoy a good allegory and metaphor in a movie, especially when the message trying to be projected to the audience is a valuable life lesson. But this one tried way too hard to be something existential and artsy, and it turned into something that I am pretty sure will not be able to hold most audiences’ attention long enough to be able to figure what the film is really about.
In the end, I can only think that the entire movie was something that was going on in Jake’s head and that each character, including the unnamed young woman, existed only in his mind to display the inner turmoil of his character? Really that is the only conclusion that I can come up with guys. I am sorry that I do not have better things to say about this one because the trailer looked pretty interesting. But after watching it, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is definitely not my cup of tea.
But if you are brave enough to catch this one, please feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think it represents and if you liked it. Now, please excuse me while I go to watch some cute puppies on YouTube to ease my confused brain.
Rating: 2 out of 10
For my review of psychological thriller Relic you can click here. And for more mind-bending reviews you can follow Redmangoreviews on Facebook here.
Dark Alice has an old soul and a curious mind. I believe that anyone can be a hero and that the good guys should always win! I dislike cruelty to animals and think that they have far superior qualities to humans. My motto is there is no future without the past. I also have a weird penchant for Paranormal TV shows even though the slightest sound makes me jump.
I enjoy writing reviews and throwing in fun facts to pique the readers’ curiosity. My ultimate goal in life would be to become a published writer one day. You can find me as Dark Alice Reviews on Facebook, my Instagram is alice_oscura and my Twitter handle is @lise_veliz2. For more on me you can click here.