Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Benson & Moorhead Reach For Infinity But End Up With “The Endless”

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Two brothers return to the cult they fled from years ago to discover that the group’s beliefs may be saner than they once thought.

Some independent films baffle you with mere ambition – and if, like Icarus, their wings are singed in the process, so be it. On a limited budget, they attempt to convey grandiose, existential ideas. Brit Marling is one of those filmmakers, whose “Another Earth,” “I Origins,” and the recent Netflix series “The OA,” all deal with parallel dimensions, mankind’s origins, the capabilities of the human mind and, well, other trippy stuff. But it’s Marling’s “The Sound of My Voice” that perhaps most closely echoes Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s “The Endless”… with dashes of Alex Garland’s recent Annihilation and a heavy dose of Lovecraftian eccentricity thrown in for good measure. If that sounds intriguing, it mostly is, the brothers managing to sustain the tone of building dread – yet it begins to unravel in its second half, Icarus’ wings igniting in the film’s apocalyptic finale.

The directors play the leads, Justin (Benson) and Aaron (Moorhead), brothers who escaped from a cult when they were young. Antisocial and depressed, they go to deprogramming sessions and secretly long for the warm embrace of the cult, particularly Aaron, who thinks they should have stayed in the first place. There is a nice juxtaposition happening here, the dim and dreary normalcy of everyday existence set against the lunacy of living in a welcoming cult (it brought to mind prison films where inmates commit suicide upon experiencing freedom).

So the brothers go back to what now is ostensibly a camp. They reconnect with old “friends,” who welcome them with open arms, albeit not without a trace of creepiness. There’s Hal (Tate Ellington), the leader, though he claims he isn’t one. There’s the bearded Tim (Lew Temple), a bit of an outcast in the group, along with Dave (David Lawson Jr.), who always smiles. There’s clothing designer Anna (Callie Hernandez). There’s Lizzy (Kira Powell), who upon wandering out of a nearby mental health facility decided she’s better off here. There’s Jennifer (Emily Montague), so sick of the gang partying all the time, she weeps and leaves notes everywhere for people to shut up – but also has an agenda of her own. According to Justin, they are all castrated and in their 40s… “they just look young.” He thinks it’s all bullshit and wants to go home, but Aaron is enthralled and asks him to stay one more day.

Things get weird. A chalkboard equation Hal is working on solves… what exactly? “Wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Hal intones mysteriously. A physically impossible trick involving a baseball may not be a trick at all. There’s a rope-pulling contest, the other end of it attached to something invisible – and impossibly strong – in the sky. Bullets ricochet against an invisible barrier, one that is most apparent at night, when it reflects this world’s three moons. A shack stands in the middle of a hay field, with a clock on it on repeat, and something uncanny happens inside, over and over again. According to Hal, the “answer” is at the bottom of a nearby lake, a Rorschach-like stain in the midst of which Justin discovers a rusty container with a tape. “It’s how It communicates with us,” Hal explains at a viewing ceremony. “With images.”

“The Endless” may or may not reveal what “It” is, along with answers to all the other questions it steadily poses. Perspectives shift. What if Justin is wrong, this isn’t a cult, and there is, in fact, a god-like entity ruling over this domain? What if, as the outcast, half-crazy Carl (James Jordan) stutters, the brothers are, indeed, trapped in a series of time-loops – a time-loop zone if you will – and all the humans are nothing but mere pawns entertaining this terrifying, all-consuming entity until it kills them, therein resetting the loop?

This is nutty territory and one has to tread carefully to avoid stumbling headfirst into silliness. Thankfully, for the most part, Benson and Moorhead succeed, pulling the viewer into a world where one has to both suspend disbelief and have their feet firmly planted on the ground, a world of illusion and hyperreality, of freedom and surrender, where time is both crucial and irrelevant. They incorporate themes of finding connection in a crumbling society and, like I mentioned, are best at contrasting the alienation of the “normal” world against the warmth and acceptance of the alien one. One could perceive “The Endless” as a treatise on the nature of time and/or an allegory of defying God – or neither.

The problems occur in the film’s second half when it strays away from the cult into the aforementioned “Annihilation” territory. Things get weird – and by weird, I mean Weird – and if you don’t know what I mean, check out Jeff VanderMeer’s work. The worlds he creates consist of things both familiar and alien, existential and minute, tangible and surreal. And it all somehow resonates, achieves the goal of striking senses in us that perceive the imperceptible. If the filmmakers harbored those kinds of aspirations with “The Endless,” they take a few major missteps. The brothers’ constant wandering in-between time-loop zones verge on unintentionally hysterical in how earnest and serious those sequences are. Upon the brothers’ discovery of the time loops, their nonchalant attitude is somewhat confusing (I’d be freaking the hell out). They banter about sleeping with Anna and jab each other – WHILE STUCK IN A FREAKIN’ TWILIGHT ZONE.

On a positive note, frequent moments of humor come from the brothers’ rapport, which is never forced – their chemistry is a crucial grounding factor in an otherwise-demented narrative. The way the directors utilize slow motion shots and music helps build and sustain suspense. Their imagery is striking, some of the dialogue exchanges thought-provoking. I just wish they reigned it in a little. Benson and Moorhead reached for the stars and ended up imploding.

But it’s the reaching that matters.

In select theaters Friday, April 6th

 

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Alex Saveliev

Alex graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a BA in Film & Media Arts and studied journalism at the Northwestern University in Chicago. While there, he got acquainted with the late Roger Ebert, who supported and inspired Alex in his career as a screenwriter and film critic. Alex has produced, written and directed a short zombie film, “Parched,” which is being distributed internationally and he is developing a series for a TV network, and is in pre-production on a major motion picture.