The Endless (2017)
This post is part of my ongoing project to watch my science fiction blindspots. You can find my list of upcoming movies for this project here.
My science fiction watching project was conceived as a way to better educate myself about the genre. But I don’t want to limit myself just to the existing canon, which tends to favor a certain style, flavor, and viewpoint of filmmaking. More to come about my personal philosophy of cinephilia and “the canon” (whatever that actually is), but for now, suffice it to say that I’m including small-budget indie movies, forgotten gems, international movies, and work by those that “the canon” has left behind all as vital to the genre.
The Endless is one such small indie movie. It didn’t quire cohere in a way I found satisfying, although I admire its ambition. I like science fiction that is cognizant of its own limitations, and that seeks to get around them in creative ways—it’s how we got Star Wars, and Alien, and so many other touchstones within the genre. The Endless is a horror/mystery that dangles at the end of a shoestring, and although it looks as threadbare as its budget in places, it’s smart enough to use those limitations as a storytelling aid.
Two brothers (played by the film’s writer-directors, Aason Moorhead and Justin Benson) escaped a UFO death cult ten years ago. Now they’re being drawn back, at the prompting of a message from one of the members they left behind. The older of the two just wants a better, freer life for them both; the younger wants to return to the life he grew up in. He was too young to be cognizant of the cult’s insidious teachings—he only remembers being able to eat good food, and to live among people who he loved, and who seemed to love him back.
This movie’s strength is in developing a sense of uncanny mystery; it doesn’t overplay the off-putting cheeriness of the cult members, preferring instead to focus on the elder brother’s reactions to their welcome, and on his sense of increasing uneasiness. The film is also smart enough to know that suggestion can be a powerful tool: the more horrifying moments are not on screen, but just off it, and just removed enough from the camera’s focus that their impact sets in minutes later, like a bruise. I didn’t fully buy every relationship presented in the movie, and the denouement felt a hair too pat and easy; I’d have been content to sit in a more ambiguous story, one that raised more questions than answers. But I liked this movie, and I’d like to see more attempts to tell stories that might include universe-affecting stakes, but at their heart are really just stories about individual people, and their relationships, and how they each see the world in subtly different ways.
