Review of The Endless (2017) by Brendan N — 09 Dec 2018

I enjoy watching low budget films where I don't know any of the actors. You forget sometimes how refreshing it is to not know which characters are going to play large parts based on which people you recognise.

The Endless is one such film. Centering around 2 brothers who travel back to the cult they escaped as younger men, it is largely confined to an encampment in the country where strange things happen and the plot gets increasingly weird.

There's a really nice sense of unease that accompanies everything, which allows it to push the weirdness hard. The camerawork has a nice shaky, handheld feel to it that I love, and there's some lovely performances in it from the supporting cast.

Lots of positives, but I just couldn't get into it. There's two main issues I have. Firstly, they try to have special effects in the film that are far beyond their budget. If you're low budget, if you don't have the money to do SFX properly, it ends up hurting you more than helping because it all looks a bit amateurish.

Secondly, Quentin Tarantino doesn't cast himself as main roles in his films because he knows he's not a great actor. He obviously enjoys acting, so he pops in as someone small, which is never great but not too distracting.

The writers, directors, cinematographers and editors of this film are also its stars, and they ain't great. They're far from terrible, but when your crazy story is tethered to reality by your two leads, your two leads have to be great, otherwise you lose the fundamental emotional connection for the audience.

Also, they sing House of the Rising Sun because the lyrics are in the public domain but the tune isn't so they sing it all weird and it really messed with my head and made me angry, which possibly cast a pall over the rest of the film.