The Endless

Cthulhu Hoops

The Endless
USA 2017
Directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
Arrow Blu Ray Zone 2

Warning: Some spoilers on this one, I guess.

Okay... so all I can say is that I’m really glad that I saw these two director’s movie Resolution (which I reviewed right here) before I saw this one. As it turns out, the low key approach that it shares a couple of characters and ideas with that earlier film is like saying The Empire Strikes Back shares some characters and ideas with the original Star Wars (resubtitled Episode IV: A New Hope for modern, post 1977 audiences). The Endless is less a shared universe movie and more a direct sequel to the original. The directors play the main protagonists in this one, who were minor characters in the first, using their own christian names as character names. However, the two main protagonists of the last film are seen in a sizeable sequence towards the end of this film too. This one also, kinda, explains what was happening to these two, how... or at least why... the artefacts that made up that story kept appearing and also, although set ten years or so after the first film, we get director Aaron Moorhead’s character Aaron watching the sequence we saw where Mike first arrives at the cabin in Resolution. Which will make more sense once you see The Endless.

Furthermore, although it’s a direct sequel, it’s a little bit like a rerun or almost a partial remake, in some ways, of the first and one wonders if the two directors are just reworking their ideas in a greater exploration of the Lovecraftian stew they concocted for Resolution. Indeed, The Endless starts right off the bat with a direct quote from writer H. P. Lovecraft, as though the two are instantly stating their alignment with the ideas, or at least style, of that writer for the audience... wearing their influences on their sleeve in pursuit of a more 'up front' movie than the first, perhaps.

The film starts in a very similar manner to the first but, in this instance, after escaping from a weird ‘UFO Death Cult’ ten years or so prior to the events in the film, Justin is sent some video tape footage which forces him to track down some old hardware to play it on at a local boot sale. I actually like the fact that the writing allows for the obsolescence of the technology to require effort to access it in the first place and I saw a similar ode to obsolescence played out in a scene in the combined Ringu/Ju On sequel Sadako VS Kayako a couple of years ago (which desperately needs a subtitled physical release in the UK instead of a stupid, corporate streaming version... my review of the Frightfest screening of the film can be found here). I also liked that buying the technology to access this means that Justin sacrificed the money saved for buying a new car battery and this will have consequences, or at least complicate things for the two characters, further on down the line.

After seeing footage of one of the people at the cult, Justin convinces Aaron to take them back for a visit and so the two go, only to find that all the people they used to know are somehow un-aged over time and with a, mostly, welcoming attitude. And there are some nice sequences in here...

Such as the felt (rather than seen) presence of some large, Cthulhuian monster roaming around the landscape and a tug of war game with, probably, the same creature. And the odd appearance of artefacts utilising what can only be likened to ‘missing time’ in the main characters. Also, it’s hard for our characters not to notice that there are now two moons in the sky in the area they’ve gone to... explained as a naturally occurring, mirage style phenomena by members of the cult. It’s nicely done, though and is possibly the most interesting effect in the whole movie. This is coupled with some cool design transitions every now and again focusing on circular shapes which hints at what is really going on here.

However, when those double moons I mentioned suddenly become three moons, things start to go wrong for our heroes, who have become separated from each other due to an argument and who are now wandering around the local landscape trying to find each other. However, what they find instead is... time loops created by the ‘ancient unspeakable presence’ that we glimpsed (or quite noticeably didn’t glimpse, in actual fact), at the end of the last movie. Loops where people are trying to break their personal cycles... whether they last months, seasons, years or, in one case, literally a few seconds, by killing themselves in various ways. Furthermore, the two central characters from the last movie are more than aware now they must be caught in one of these time loops and Aaron, kindly, doesn’t let Mike know that his wife, played once again by Emily Montague, is actually in the commune a mile or so away and very much in a kind of loop herself, one must assume.

The film has the same stylistic traits of the previous, with small, almost imperceptible hand held camera movement a lot of the time and lots of light contrasting with a slightly subdued colour palette. There is actually a score for this one by Jimmy Lavalle although, a lot of the time, it’s kept quite minimal. The acting is all pretty great and, joining the directors along with Peter Cilella and Vinny Curran from Resolution, we have some good supporting cast such as Callie Hernandez and Tate Ellington doing some nice work here.

And... I don’t really have too much more  to say about it than that. It’s less subtle than the first movie, perhaps a little over the top at times with a run time which could maybe have been cut by 20 minutes or so once all the points have been made. Like the first one, however, it rambles along at its own pace and, although I have nothing against films that take their time, I did find this one dragging just a little towards the end. If you liked Resolution then you’re probably going to really like The Endless because, I think, despite it being a bit more overt with its portrayal of events, it’s a slightly better movie than the first. That being said, I definitely think you’ll have a far richer experience and appreciation of this film if you see Resolution first so, if you’ve not seen that one then I would definitely seek them out in chronological order. Both worth a watch for people who like low budget horror with a strong mystery element in the DNA of the films they are watching.

Resolution

Cthulhu You Think You Are?

Resolution
USA 2012
Directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
Arrow Blu Ray Zone 2

Okay so... this is a movie I’m watching that’s technically an extra from the film I actually bought. I wanted to see this new horror movie called The Endless because the trailer looked good and I knew Arrow were bringing out this limited edition set the day after its, almost impossible to see, cinema release. Well, looks like I made a good call on that one because the set sold out on its initial run (I think before it even got to some customers... they may be repressing, which of course completely kills the point of having it as a limited edition in the first place) and it turns out there’s an older film by the two directors included as part of this set called Resolution.

Then I found out that the film, although The Endless is not technically a sequel, shares two characters played by the directors in that the two leads of The Endless are seen for about a minute as the same people in Resolution. So, yeah, I say it’s technically not a sequel but, frankly, any movie which shares a character is a direct sequel as far as I’m concerned (which is why Scream 3 should be called Jay and Silent Bob 6).

Anyway, I wanted to watch these things in order and so I gave this one a spin and... you know what... I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about it.

I looked on the IMDB after I’d seen it to try and gauge the reaction and it seems to range from 1 star reviews calling it the worst film ever to 5 star reviews calling it a masterpiece. I don’t think it’s either of those things but the fact that I’m still thinking about it a day after means I probably kinda liked it, I guess. It also allows me to feel happy that I wouldn’t resort to giving anything a ‘star rating’ because, you know, what would even be the point of writing a review if you’re going to kill it off with a hierarchical rating system.

I think the main reason this film works is because of the chemistry between the two lead characters/actors... Mike (played by Peter Cilella) and Chris (played by Vinny Curran). And, apparently, these two characters also turn up in some capacity in The Endless too... although whether it’s just repeat footage from this film or something else is not a question I can answer yet (I’ll hopefully watch it sometime this week). These two seem to go great together and the writing is of a quality that it all just works... at least in terms of these two.

The plot set up is very simple. Chris the artist has managed to alienate himself from all of his friends and is slowly killing himself with drugs in a patch of desert land on an Indian reservation. Mike is sent a video of him in this state and drives out to try and get him to go into rehab. When he doesn’t, Mike tasers him (done for real, apparently, at the insistence of the actor) and handcuffs him to the radiator for a week, staying with him at his dubiously acquired shack as he goes cold turkey. However, as the week goes by, an unusual trail of artefacts start showing up which initially show some kind of strange, cultish rituals before things get a little closer to home in what they’re depicting such as an old, dusty, unearthed record (possibly a 78 RPM by the looks of it) which has a distorted conversation of it on there... which only took place a day or so before between Mike and Chris.

It’s intriguing and it almost made me forget that the movie doesn’t have a musical score, for a while. Time passes very slowly and... you do kind of feel that to a degree (the person I was watching this with couldn’t make it past the 20 minute mark before he wandered off to do something else) but it kind of holds together due to the fact that the two lead characters are fairly likeable. Also, it’s got one of those ‘almost but not quite subtle’ hand held camera things going on where almost every frame is moving but, often only a little bit in reaction to things going on in the screen (which television has been doing for a while now and which has almost become a cliché in itself). Although a cameo scene from Bill Oberst Jr. as a somewhat sobering character called Byron seems to call for a rock solid, unshakeable attention from the camera in order to make one clever(ish) shot with a mirror work better.

I think it would be true to say that the dynamic between the two characters and their possible descent into madness brought on by supernatural shenanigans could be called a trifle Lovecraftian and certainly, as far as I’m concerned (although this movie is way open to different interpretations) the film gets a little Cthulhu like in its denouement... if denouement is not too strong a word for the final sequence in this movie.

Also, there are a fair few times where the media we are watching this on kind of jiggles around and has little glitches which brings into question the whole nature of the reality of the thing we are watching and, combined with some of the stuff which shows up on Mike’s laptop in the last third of the picture, certainly gave me cause to think of the camera itself as maybe being a camera-eye version of one of H. P Lovecraft’s Ancient Ones. One almost wonders if one of the books that Mike finds is a battered, old copy of the Necronomicon.

At the end of the day, Resolution is not an earth shatteringly great movie and, neither is it that scary but, putting some of the clichés of the way the media relates to the found artefacts aside, it is a kind of thought provoking scenario, at least in the sense that it doesn’t try and dish out a specific set of answers to the questions it keeps asking. I would say, however, that the idea that Mike does not want to leave danger and almost certain death and go home to his wife at one point is kinda silly when the video email that he received at home is obviously already part of the events that have been set in motion. It’s already at your door, man... not going home won’t stop it from including your wife in events. That being said, it’s the kind of poor logic that doesn’t stop the movie from staying credible within its own set of rules... you just have to figure out what those rules might be as you go along.

So, not the best movie I’ve seen but certainly something I’ll be thinking about for a while and, hooray, now I can watch The Endless (which is something I’ll hopefully be reviewing on here sometime in the next couple of weeks).