If you're a regular reader of our newsletter, then you probably saw our recent piece on Letterboxd's new streaming platform. In that piece, industry veteran James Shapiro laid out the good, the bad, and the questionable about this new platform, sharing his hope that it might evolve into something beneficial for the future. So for our final episode of 2025 (or first episode of 2026), we decided to check out one of Letterboxd's streaming titles: It Ends, a high-concept horror film that's been buzzed about at every major horror festival in 2025.
When a group of high school friends takes a wrong turn on their college road trip, there’s not much to be worried about at first. So they missed a turnoff, big deal - they can double back and catch it in the other direction. But no matter how long the group drives, the turnoff never appears, and soon the group finds themselves on an endless road, chased by a horde of faceless people who seem to want their car. The debut feature from Alexander Ullom, It Ends is the director’s attempt at finding a new way to look at the genre: something he’s coined “hangout horror” for the modern movie audiences.
In this excerpt from the episode, Matthew Monagle explains why It Ends feels like a true generational shift in how people make and discuss horror.
We get up and we find out something terrible has happened almost every single day, and we just have to go do our job, go hang out with our people, go do our freelance, whatever else it is. And I feel like Gen Z has embodied that in such a unique way - having been the pandemic generation, having been the social media generation, and just being confronted by the horrors every single day and being asked to continue with it.
The It Ends episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, or the podcast platform of your choice.
