Alex Ullom Is the Gen Z Mastermind Behind “It Ends”
We sat down with Tampa native filmmaker Alex Ullom to talk about his new movie, "It Ends," directing in his home state and how Gen Z is dominating the film industry.
With the Aug. 21 release of “It Ends,” his debut feature, Tampa native Alex Ullom, 27, is poised to become the next Gen Z breakthrough filmmaker.
The film arrives on screens nationwide amid the blockbuster success of “Obsession” (directed by Curry Baker, 26) and “Backrooms” (directed by Kane Parsons, 21). A kind of road movie to nowhere, the film is a journey driven by generational angst and dorm-room philosophizing as a quartet of friends (played by Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth and Mitchell Cole) hop into an SUV for a fateful drive into the woods. They’re going to a party, but an unexpected turn leads … somewhere else.
The project began in 2022, when Ullom was preparing to graduate from film school at Florida State University, whose Torchlight program provided key support at its studio, then-located in Midway. Exterior scenes were shot at various forested areas around Tallahassee and Gainesville. Over the course of the next two years, the film was shot, re-shot, and re-shot again, as a lowkey student film morphed into what would become the major summer release for Neon, a distributor known for its best picture Oscar winners “Parasite” and “Anora.”
This is a character piece through and through. It’s more about the comedown from horror, what you physically process after you get shaken.
-Alex Ullom
Altha native Cole, who also writes and directs his own Panhandle-set films (“Against the Spread”), found real creative kinship with Ullom. “His ability to build worlds and atmospheres is something I admire most about him,” he says, taking appreciative note of the distinctively, but not stereotypically, “good ol’ boy” that was written for him to play. “We both grew up in Florida, so we’ve each spent time around and been influenced by a lot of people from the same walks of life,” Cole continues. “I don’t feel like you see characters specifically like Tyler much in film, so I really respect Alex for finding a way to introduce those types of people into his storytelling.”
Recently, Flamingo hopped on a Zoom call with Ullom, who is in Vancouver, B.C. making his next movie, “4×4: The Event,” an original drama about a death match staged in “an illegal sensory-assault livestream.” He talks about shooting in his native Florida, his role in the generational shift happening in Hollywood and why “It Ends” isn’t a horror movie.
NO SPOILERS HERE, OBVIOUSLY, BUT HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE “IT ENDS”?
ALEX ULLOM: Four friends hanging out, go for a late-night drive, and that’s it.
PEOPLE MAY EXPECT A HORROR FILM BUT IT QUICKLY MOVES BEYOND THAT.
AU: I don’t see it as a horror movie. If you put a character through a very stressful life-or-death situation, it becomes almost a horror movie. It’s more a hangout movie. I always pitch it as “if Richard Linklater made a horror movie,” but I wouldn’t want people sitting down thinking, “Oh, this is going to be the next loud, then quiet, then jump scare, set piece.” This is not that. This didn’t have the resources to be that. This is a character piece through and through. It’s more about the comedown from horror, what you physically process after you get shaken.
I WAS THINKING “GROUDHOG DAY” MEETS “SLACKER.”
AU: Yeah, I like that. I love “Slacker.”
HOW DID YOUR OWN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS SPARK THE CONCEPT?
AU: I had a lot of structures dissolve. I was at an edge. I was feeling that adulthood was going to be insurmountable, [with] potentially infinite levels of stuff that I couldn’t carry. I only came out of it because I had good support systems and loving relationships, which where James sort of ends up. That was the emotional spine for the movie. The actual practical spine was that we had no money and shooting in a car is really easy.
IT WAS FASCINATING TO KNOW THAT THE MOVIE WAS RESHOT TWICE IN THE MULTI-YEAR PROCESS OF MAKING IT.
AU: I messed it up the first time because I was shooting from the hip. It was just a group of friends, trying to figure it out. This was truly film school for us—on top of going to film school. I don’t think film school is a necessary thing, but it was very useful for me to meet my lifelong collaborators and actually learn that stuff. Also the school helped financially support the movie with production packaging. Shout out to Torchlight at Florida State. We couldn’t have made the movie without Florida, the community in Tallahassee. They’re the reason the movie exists. The reshoot process was made easy, because we were able to go back and patch the broken parts of the movie. There was a creative patchwork made possible by a great community.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW “IT ENDS” PLAYS INTO GENERATIONAL ANXIETIES, MUCH AS “OBSESSION” AND “BACKROOMS”?
AU: This is more probably about the spiritual crisis of Gen Z and the fact that we’re inheriting a poisoned republic that is speed running its structural collapse. If “Obsession” is a twist on the specific relationship between men and women, and “Backrooms” is a twist on a corporate hellscape. I’d say this is another one of those structures. Every structure that used to exist, that used to give people meaning, whether it was religion or nationalism or the nuclear family or love, all of those structures are being collapsed into nothing and disappearing. And now it’s on the kids to figure out where their moral structures and philosophies lie.
YOUR FILM HITS THEATERS IN THE WAKE OF THOSE TWO BLOCKBUSTERS. DOES THAT MAKE FOR PRESSURE OR MAKE THINGS FEEL EASIER?
AU: I’m very grateful that Hollywood is finally making space for our generation because they’ve kind of held the door closed for too long. They’ve lost the people, and I think we’ll now have very specific cultural movies that are actually about what people are going through. What’s weird for me is … Kane and Curry had honed their craft through YouTube, and then they released what is essentially their executed-at-a-higher-budget film. This [film] is my YouTube musings. This is my film school. I’m just grateful that anyone is seeing this movie because it’s kind of a miracle that this movie exists or works at all. It only works because of the performances and the specific support of the community, and obviously pressure’s on.
WHAT’S UP WITH YOUR NEW MOVIE?
AU: It’s probably the exact opposite movie of “It Ends.” It’s playing with visual overload, and it does not let up for a single second. It’s my “Obsession.” It’s my “Backrooms.” It’s my thing that I got a lot more resources for, and I’ve honed my craft over six years now. I feel now that I am the filmmaker that I thought that I was when I was 22. The main overlap is that it is about the physiological suffering of Gen Z. I find myself behind the monitor sometimes being like, “Geez, holy! This is going to be a lot.” This is extreme maximalism. If “It Ends” was minimalism, this is extreme maximalism. It’s gonna blow some speakers.
WHAT WERE SOME FORMATIVE FILMS FOR YOU?
AU: You said one earlier, “Slacker.” I just love talking to people. “Two Lane Blacktop,” a masterpiece of road cinema. “Attack on Titan.” It’s an anime. It’s an existential hellscape anime. “Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick. And then Instagram reels, probably.
I’m very grateful that Hollywood is finally making space for our generation because they’ve kind of held the door closed for too long.
-Alex Ullom
WHAT WAS IT ABOUT MAKING A MOVIE IN FLORIDA THAT REALLY SPOKE TO YOU?
AU: You can’t really live a false existence in Florida. You can definitely get thrown down a rabbit hole. It’s like the Australia of the United States. It’s a very unfiltered version of reality. You go to other places and you can step into the woods and like, “Ah, the trees are so beautiful, and I get to walk around a nice little gushing river.” If you step 10 feet into the woods in Florida, you’re being attacked by nature and spiders and literal rattlesnakes. I almost stepped on a rattlesnake, and we had to move the entire production. Florida has absolutely shaped me, and I’m very grateful for the community there that helped us make the movie.
For more on Florida filmmakers, click here.
About the Author
Steve, a Tallahassee native and Flamingo contributor since 2017, has written about film, music, art and other popular culture for publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, GQ, and The Los Angeles Times. He is the artistic director for the Tallahassee Film Festival and writes a monthly film newsletter for Flamingo, Dollar Matinee.
