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I’m Thinking of Ending Things Movie Review

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a 2020 psychological horror mystery film directed by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley. It’s a fascinating film.

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“I’m thinking of ending things“

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A doubtful young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents’ secluded farm. She wants to end things with him, but he is persistent. At first, the film acts as an examination of a deteriorating relationship, a relationship that is freshly new and doomed from the start. Seemingly, the movie is about the young woman as you hear her voices inside her head, but something was definitely off even from the beginning when you would realize that Jake himself would interrupt her thoughts as if he could telepathically read her mind.

And then, at the end of the movie, we get a big revelation, a twist ending that changes everything. This entire film has always been about Jake, but his younger self is imagined and so is the girl. You see, an old janitor has been imagining having a girlfriend that was probably an amalgamation of all of his previous girlfriends or his dream girlfriend. But she doesn’t exist and thus most of the movie plays out as a fantasy happening inside this lonely old man’s head.

That revelation twisted the whole movie on its head. It suddenly became a film about regret, loneliness and old age depression. The whole movie is at its core an examination of aging and the horror of it all, as best evidenced by the movie’s second act, which was quite unlike the rest of the picture in its clear horror overtones that were very much reminiscent of this year’s ‘Relic’. It is obvious by now that a new genre has emerged from Hollywood, and that is the horror drama genre. These films deal with the horrors of aging, depression and disease, and are thus all the more effective by intensifying those existential fears that all of us harbor deep inside.

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Just dealing with that section with the parents for the rest of the movie would have been great as well as that part was very creepy, incredibly sad and even devastating emotionally speaking. But this structurally interesting experiment again returned to the next extended cat sequence and it was mostly just as strong as the first one. The conversations that the two have about movies and art in general were consistently engaging and I particularly liked the movie reviewing quality to these discussions along with some great film references. And simply following the submissive-aggressive dichotomy between the two that switched later down the line in their roles was very interesting, albeit very toxic.

The performances are something else, especially that of Jessie Buckley. Jesse Plemons is excellent in this very sad, frustrated role where he plays this man full of regret about his failures in life. But Buckley is the real star as her Lucy or Louisa or whatever else she was called is terrific. She played this imagined being in such a forceful, complex manner as you buy all of her changing personality traits and shifts. It’s one of the best actress performances of the year.

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I’m Thinking of Ending Things is also very strong in terms of atmosphere, cinematography and superbly crafted sets with the car and the house and the snow outside being instantly memorable in their imagery. I also liked the ending, but I did find the singing and dancing scenes unnecessary. The film is very long, but it’s so well directed and so intriguing throughout that I did not mind its length whatsoever. It hooks you in right from the start and never lets go.