Review of I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) by Jluis_001 — 07 Sep 2020

I’m Thinking of Ending Things it’s quite a trip. I expected no less from Kaufman, but what lies behind the facade is too vague. And when you wander down that path if there’s no heart behind the intellectual pomposity, you will hardly give the viewer good reasons to remain interested beyond the fact of assuming that it’s a "deep" film and the weak couldn’t understand it.

Honestly, I'm already preparing for the wave of opinions that I will see about that online.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things feeds on being weird but unfortunately for its development it doesn't seem to be interested in that weirdness being something worth mentioning, rather that is simply the presentation layer. It's an idea that doesn't seem to make sense, especially since this is reflected in the characters and you understand it when after certain events you realize that there is no central character. The idea and its conceptualization are those who take center stage but that only makes sense when you realize the characters presented aren't going anywhere.

Sounds weird? Trust me it's weirder.

From the beginning when we have the perspective of the character of Jessie Buckley, you realize that something is wrong.

She's meeting her boyfriend's parents for the first time but while inside the car with him, we can see he's barely interested in responding to her. We arrive at the parent’s house but there, the story stagnates and even when the film invites surrealism, it's evident that there's a big disconnection between what is seen on screen and what I assume is being explored in its philosophical allegories.

In that house we meet the parents of Jesse Plemons' character and they are played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis, but both characters are shown so exaggerated and clumsy that at no time they seem like real people.

Although it's evident that it's about putting a discordant atmosphere in that home in which a good piece of the plot takes place, one also cannot help asking what the true purpose of that was.

And it's that what follows is quite bizarre. The characters turn into others, several times, this because time seems to go back and forth and you ask yourself many things at that moment and not so much because you want to know what is happening, but because it's inevitable to question whether there will be a payoff to all that stuff. Unfortunately as you keep going you realize that it doesn't really matter and is there where the key and monumental flaw of this film lies.