You may have noticed that I recently reviewed a movie about cults, and well, I just got a bit of a taste for them, okay? Upon recommendation from a friend, this was next on the list.
The Endless is actually the third movie in a trilogy by directors (and leading actors) Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. However, I had no idea that two movies came before it when watching, and to be honest, it really doesn’t make a difference. Though all three films are intrinsically linked, each one of them stands alone as its own movie. Moorhead and Benson play two brothers who escaped the grasp of a UFO death cult that they were born into as kids. When they return to visit in adulthood, they quickly realise that the cult’s beliefs may not be quite as insane as they had originally thought, and strange occurrences begin to take a hold of them.
One sentence to summarise?: Well that was not what I was expecting.
A low budget, indie sci-fi cult thriller that definitely packs a punch, some of the shots and imagery in this is outstanding. The grainy, low quality cameras only add to said visuals, and it is my honest belief that anything more than this film’s less-than-one-million-dollars budget would have made it more corny and less believable. What the two young directors manage to do with this passion project is quite remarkable, and they definitely deserve a huge amount of credit for that.
Quite confusing at times, it’s easy to have conceived a thousand questions by the halfway mark. However, if you pay full attention, you’ll eventually unravel what is going on using brain power. In fact, part of the fun of it is sorting through what the hell is going on. Definitely mind-bending and cerebral in terms of its themes, so if that’s your thing, The Endless surely won’t disappoint. Surprisingly, it also comes packaged with a good bunch of subtle performances among an ensemble of relatively unknown actors.
I won’t pretend that this isn’t a difficult watch. At points it was hard to see where it would eventually go, and the 1 hour mark left me feeling like they were going to drag it all out for way too long but it ended up being okay. Some sequences seem irrelevant at first, but the longer you watch, the more you’ll be able to connect the dots and everything has its place. This is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, with a decent pay off by the time you get to the ambiguous ending.
Original and interesting in its overall premise, The Endless boggles the mind and entertains the eyes. Though not always doused in spectacle, it’s well worth the watch.
The Endless is available to stream on Netflix.
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