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“I’ve Been Trying to Coin the Phrase ‘Hangout Horror'”: Alexander Ullom on SXSW 2025 Premiere It Ends
It Ends In the last decade, a growing number of films and TV shows have iterated the time loop: Russian Doll‘s nested doll approach, Inception‘s infinitely spinning top. Alexander Ullom’s feature debut It Ends subverts those genre expectations at every turn—or rather, at every absence of a turn. Premiering in SXSW 2025’s Narrative Feature Competition, the film might superficially be grouped alongside similar-sounding genre titles like It, It Comes at Night and How It Ends. But as Ullom explained to me, his intentions were both more playful and somber. In a sense, this story about four zoomers who get into a car and find themselves on an endless road, menaced whenever they stop by screaming hordes running from the woods, is a pandemic film—edited over two years and shot in two 20-day stretches. The first was half exterior and half in a virtual production facility at Florida State University, Ullom’s alma mater; the second of which consisted of reshoots and fixes that happened after Snoot Entertainment came on board with funding. The film has scares aplenty, with room for philosophizing on the roadside shoulder. Be warned: specific spoiler alerts are labeled.
Filmmaker: Why this film now?
Ullom: I made the film when I was the same age as the characters, coming into the real world. There is a level of functioning numbness [they] live with post-horror, in the second half of the movie, [which] is pretty relevant to how a lot of people are very desensitized—we live in a pretty wild time! Not to mention, the kids in the movie are about to enter the job market, so it [driving in an endless loop, with only 90-second breaks before starting again, while otherwise continuously confined] is probably one-to-one what would have actually happened to them.
Filmmaker: The film appears to be about Gen Z, but do you think the story is generation-specific?
Ullom: The way they talk is always going to be rooted in the time I grew up in, but the film’s really just for anyone who’s ever had to grow up. I don’t know how much I totally buy in a generational theory. It’s universal; everyone’s looking for meaning.
Filmmaker: You have said in a previous interview that with this film, you wanted to have a story that transitions from horror to hangout. That’s a nifty description! Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Ullom: The current space of horror in movies is awesome, and really the most commercially viable framework to do tons of form and tone experimentation on a low budget. It’s kind of a godsend for indie. [But] I love hangout movies [laughs]! I’ve been trying to coin the phrase “hangout horror.” It probably won’t catch on. I’ve always been more interested in what happens way after the horror. I make this joke too much, but I like the idea of the Hereditary family giving a post-game interview and being like, “That was fucking terrifying. I hated that!,” and seeing people try to compartmentalize and live with this ever-present fear. It’s less about fighting and overcoming the threat, and more about trying to sort it, because it exists forever in your life at all times. You have to create a functioning numbness, or tragic level of optimism, because this [threat] is right here at all times. It was kind of what it felt like growing up. All the characters react in different ways; James has the hardest trouble processing it.
Filmmaker: My own experience watching was that I kept expecting to get scared even when you’re giving us evidence that things have changed. Maybe this is the way we as horror audience have been trained to feel. Does that make sense?
Ullom: It’s definitely such a spoiler that the scares slowly trickle off. I’m very interested to see how that performs. When you compartmentalize fear, you have a level of PTSD where you’re ready to be scared, but you’re more ready for it. So, as [the characters] are going down this road, they would be more emotionally equipped to deal with it, and so is the audience. I have a good attention span, but I’ve found that in a lot of typical horrors, by the third act I have a level of desensitization to the sound, rhythm and cuts of a movie. Those genre tricks are less effective after I’ve been accustomed to the theater and what’s been going on for the last hour. So, I definitely wanted to play with expectations; the movie desperately relies on that. The main character [James] has expectations the entire time as he is actively looking for plot and conflict and reasons to be scared so that he can somehow find an answer. It’s a very similar journey to the audience, who at that point are very surprised that [two of the other characters,] Fisher and Day are just trying to hang out and vibe. And it’s like, “We’re in a horror movie. You can’t just start making jokes about the premise of the movie!” But to play with expectations, you also have to deliver on horror in the first half. You can’t completely abandon it. I love horror and genre as an approach, and I have so much love and respect for the great horror filmmakers, but the plan all along was [to get the characters to that hangout point in the second half].
Filmmaker: [Spoiler Alert] Would you say this is an endless road film, a loop film like Groundhog Day, neither or both?
Ullom: Neither. It’s a really scary character piece. There’s definitely a new context to the ending. I wouldn’t say that [the main character] is restarting his journey. He has a different perspective on it. The entire movie is constantly trying to recontextualize itself, and that’s what the ending does. [Spoilers End]
Filmmaker: I read that you shot all the interior car scenes inside a virtual production facility at Florida State University, and that you did so by plasma-cutting a Jeep into parts and reassembling it back on stage because the car wouldn’t fit through the door. Could you talk about the advantages of this opportunity to shoot inside a car in a virtual production facility?
Ullom: I can only speak to car photography, because we didn’t try to put the actors in an actual space. There was never a volume shot where they were in the woods. All the woods stuff was exterior. One thing it did is [create] infinite blue hour. There’s three scenes where it’s that crack-of-dawn feeling. You get perfect lighting every time, like you would get on a studio lot. However, because we were a smaller film, we were still moving pretty fast. It’s just you and the actors once everything gets set up. It’s definitely harder for actors when the entire crew is standing right there in a quiet room and watching, but the actors were so talented, it didn’t even matter. I personally think it looks it looks more realistic than a green screen would have. You also get reflections from the screen on the actors’ faces. There’s upsides and downsides, and we were definitely figuring it out while doing it.
Filmmaker: You said one constraint of shooting inside the virtual facility is that you always have to stabilize the background. How do you do that when you’re shooting the actors in a medium shot, then getting a closeup?
Ullom: The film has a huge time jump, so there’s either first half or second half scenes. First half, the takes can rattle off a bit more because it’s more close up and kinetic. If it was a peaceful scene, we were locked off and wider, and there’s more of the car. I would only get one set-up per actor. If we had time, we would get a lot of other coverage. We blocked everything production-wise by time of day. If there was a morning scene, we were knocking out every single morning scene, because the lighting adjustments and plates would take the smallest amount of time to change. It was more shot design and less coverage. It’s much easier to shoot the thriller stuff because it’s right here [as a closeup] and there’s less to light. Last addendum: if we had a really intense screaming scene, we would not put that next to a fun scene. [The actors] would have to come down after that. That took main priority.
Filmmaker: Was there was any scope for improvisation in the dialog? It seemed to me that during the film’s calmer stretches, when the characters are just chatting, there could’ve been scope for improvisation, but you’re also shooting coverage.
Ullom: Surprisingly, not too much improv was on the day of. We would explore in rehearsals, so improv way beforehand.There would be a bunch of scribbles on the side of the script to make the dialogue more natural, or when [we] cut a line. The actors are improving the dialog.
Filmmaker: [Spoiler Alert] Another way you are subverting expectations is not having the characters who leave the car ever return. Audiences might think that if a character’s not dead, then they’re going to come back. But then we just don’t see them again! Did you always know before you wrote the script that they would never come back, or did you discover that during the writing process?
Ullom: [Spoiler Alert] At the end of the movie, James is heading back to get his friends. There could have been a version where he found them and they all get together again. But I think his decision to go back for them is more important than actually seeing them again. Once he’s emotionally committed to that, he’s already changed and reached the end of his arc, so I don’t think he needed to see them. Tyler is so much farther back that it would be very hard to get him. He’s probably out there becoming king of the woods or something. [laughs] I have no idea. [Spoilers End]
Filmmaker: You said you cast off Instagram. What’s the beginner’s guide to doing that?
Ullom: I guess just posting? Two of the four actors were from Instagram, two were people I knew personally. I used Backstage too. I met Mitchell Cole [who plays Tyler] in college. He’s an actual HVAC repairman in real life, literally in the boonies of Florida. Noah Toth, who plays Fisher, had auditioned for one of my thesis films. It didn’t work out but I saved a picture of him on my computer with the note, “Work with this guy again”). Then, just chemistry reads with each other; they all bonded.
Filmmaker: So, you put out a casting call. Were you also randomly looking at profiles?
Ullom: I was DMing some random people, but to no response [laughs].
Filmmaker: What do you think makes James, played by Phinehas Yoon, different from the rest of the characters? As you said, he’s always looking for conflict but also changes the most. At the same time, you don’t introduce too much backstory with any of the characters. Which character could the audience relate to most?
Ullom: I think every character reaches an extremely valid conclusion, but James definitely has the hardest time processing everything. A lot of the characterization just comes from how they interact with each other. A lot of the time, James is an asshole and a control freak, so it makes sense that he has a lot of problems giving up control. He’s hyperrational, hyper logical, so he has a hard time accepting that nothing makes sense. Whereas, with the tiny pieces of character [work] you get, [you know] Fisher and Day have already dealt with a certain level of intense suffering, Tyler especially. Part of the reason he leaves is because he’s just further along his journey of acceptance than the others.
Part of the reason James has the hardest time is that the others all find meaning in different ways—Fisher and Day find it in each other, [for example]. James is really only moving forward because that’s the only thing that he’s attached himself to, the structure that he’s on—this road, adulthood, capitalism, whatever. It’s the only thing he has moving forward and that’s external, then once he confronts the end, he realizes, “Oh shit, I actually just enjoy talking with my friends.” The place he was deriving meaning from was not from him; that was just the structure he existed inside of.
