I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) User Reviews

Here's some help understanding the meaning of the movie

[beatrizpvcoutinho · 7/10 · 4 September 2020]

To anyone who has no idea what they have just watched here is the opinion of someone who read the book (which helps a lot in understanding the movie).

The book also starts with Jake and his girlfriend going to visits his parents house. The girlfriend had been getting strange phone calls for weeks from her own number, and whoever is calling always leaves a voicemail saying "there is only one question to answer" but she hasn't told Jake about it yet. When they get to jakes house the interactions are also odd but Jakes parents dont age like in the movie. When they finally leave they also stop at the ice cream shop and then at the school where Jake disappears. Worried , his girlfriend goes after him , and there are many pages describing how terrified she is while going through rooms from the school where only a janitor lives. That's when the big plottwist of the book happens. You find out that the girlfriend never existed, it was only someone Jake once met when he was young but he didn't manage to get the courage to ask for her number. You find out that when he was young he was a bright young man who worked at a lab but he lacked social skills so he was never able to make many friends, or even just interact with people, so eventually he quit and became a janitor so he could be alone. However he becomes extremely lonely, slowly loosing his mind while dreaming of the life he could have lived and the importance of relationships. You find out that the "question" mentioned on the phone calls is "What are you waiting for" (which unfortunately doesn't appear in the movie although the phone calls do). This is what Jake has been thinking for days while debating if he should or shouldnt kill himself. So he writes a notebook with this whole story of the girlfriend which is basically the book you are reading and he eventually kills himself over loneliness.

In the movie there isn't a big plottwist because it is much more evident throughout the movie that this is sort of a dream, or that it's not really reality. The girlfriend says in the end that she never actually talked to Jake indicating that they never dated. The death occurs in the dance scene but it's not as explicit as in the book. The final song seems to be about not giving up which Jake tried for a long time. I'm just disappointed that they never reveal what the question of the phone calls was , because it makes them feel pointless...

There are many scenes in the movie that don't happen in the book, but overall the story is the same. I believe they made an amazing adaptation! It is very visually pleasing, the acting is amazing and I loved the mixing of dance, music and animation when you weren't expecting at all.

So there you have it! I hope this helped some of you understanding the movie a bit better !

Movie Explained

[averagebear · 6/10 · 14 January 2022]

First of all, the movie is about Jake, NOT the girl. She is a mere compliation of many girls he has dated. Snapshots of several failed relationships. Her thoughts are actually his, what he believes she's thinking about. When she starts thinking in a direction he doesn't like (or negative towards him) he interrupts, changes his thoughts. But I do encourage you to watch it again, focusing on him, leaving her as just a mish mash of his past but all the thoughts are really his. It will make MUCH more sense.

It's better you know what this film is about before you watch it. Charlie Kaufman does it again.

[siderite · 8/10 · 19 February 2021]

Usually I recommend people to not watch or read reviews, just enjoy the film in their own way. This one, though, is better if you are well prepared for it. It's a two hour fifteen minute film that requires another twenty minutes for the obligatory YouTube video that explains what you've just seen. Foundflix has a nice Explained for it, but watch or read whatever. Because you need to understand you are going to sit through the slow, oh so slow, dissolution of a man's mind, complete with heavy references to books and films and musicals, awkward scenes that make you want to skip forward, long internal monologues, the whole thing. It is also worth mentioning that this film is based of a book, one that is not written by Kaufman, but right up his alley. You might want to check that out before attempting to see the film.

Once you know you are going to see that, you won't feel cheated when finally starting to watch the movie and realizing it will not entertain you at all. Maybe it will make you ponder the nature of reality and inner life, maybe it will make you grab a gun and kill yourself or your parents, maybe it will make you write a dissertation on it, so other people get what you got or at least friends will honor you for surviving through it, but relaxing entertainment or any sort of pleasure that is not purely intellectual you will not get.

There are no twists at the end, the basic premise is made clear rather soon and from that moment you will wait for the film to end. There is no hero journey, no big reveal of information that will guide you through life, no story. The only beautiful thing in the movie is Jessie Buckley. So get into your Dostoyevski reading mood or whatever and only then attempt a viewing. Just trying on a whim and then complaining about it won't cut it. You have to work to see this film. Only when you're prepared to do that work will I recommend it to you.

Charlie Kaufman is as brilliant - and frustrating - as ever

[gortx · 3 April 2021]

A young man invites his new girlfriend to drive out and meet his parents. A simple enough set-up for film, even if the title hints that all may not go well. But, in this fun-house mirror of a movie, all is not as it appears. Anyone familiar with the work of Charlie Kaufman (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK) won't either be surprised or expect anything else.

The young man is Jake (Jesse Plemmons; quite good) and the unnamed girlfriend (who also narrates) is played by an excellent Jesse Buckley. The extended drive in a raging snowstorm to his family home takes over 20 minutes. By the time they arrive there is already a sense of dread from the title, the creepy narration and an overall mood of upcoming doom. Meeting the parents doesn't ease the tension. The couple (Toni Collette, David Thewlis) seem to age and de-age at will as if showing the span of Jake's relationship with them. Meanwhile, a middle-aged Janitor (Guy Boyd) toils away alone in the local high school. A visit to Jake's boyhood bedroom reveals it's own house of horrors along with clues as to what may be going on inside his fractured mind.

The sustained build-up has no release valve. The mood is unbearably tense, abetted by Lukasz Zal's (IDA) cinematography, Jay Wadley's score and Molly Hughes' production design The movie is framed in the classic 1:37 aspect ratio to heighten the constrained feel. But, the damn doesn't burst. Instead, it's back in Jake's car and the pair travel back in the snowstorm in a sequence even longer than the initial drive. The two stories interconnect at the High School when the young couple meet the Janitor. This brings the story some sense of structure, but, the movie still raises more concerns than solace.

Kaufman's script takes liberties from Ian Reid's novel - again, one expects nothing less from him. Kaufman's obsession with puppets and marionettes (including an entire film, ANAMOLISA, made entirely of claymation models), is again on display here with an extended Mime sequence. Is it his way of saying that he is pulling the strings of the audience? As noted at the outset, ENDING THINGS is a bit of a fun-house mirror - what reflects off of it is a distortion and open to interpretation. Kaufman has never evoked David Lynch as much he does here - in particular, the driving sequences and dark visions of LOST HIGHWAY. The literary and cultural references are reminiscent of Godard at his most obtuse (at one point, one of the characters quotes an entire Pauline Kael film review; there is a Kael book in Jake's bedroom).

I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS isn't an easy sit. Kaufman has a brilliant mind and has skills as a Director. But, like with Lynch, sometimes their films seem to only exist in the minds of the filmmakers. One can decipher the clues and piece together some sort of notion of "what it all means", but, isn't it part of an artist's job to share his vision with his audience? To challenge, certainly. But, not to be so selfish as to frustrate. It's both brilliant and not so satisfying.

Good but missing crucial elements from book

[himukale · 7/10 · 4 September 2020]

This is a completely biased review after reading Iain Reid's novel. So the movie adaptation was pretty good. However, I think the ending could have taken a few pointers from the book. The way it ended made the movie seem incomplete. I also think Kaufman made the mistake of completely omitting the plot-twist. It wasn't apparent enough to the audience that Lucy/the Janitor was Jake the entire time; or even that fact that they were a figment of his imagination.

I don't know... and the fact that Jake didn't kill himself with the coat hanger completely ruined the double meaning behind "I'm thinking of ending things"; given that throughout the story, the audience was under the impression that the girlfriend was only going to break up with Jake.

Last but not least, the mysterious message from The Caller. "There's only one question we need to resolve" was used in the story as a precursor to what should have been Jake's suicide. It was later revealed that the question was: "What are you waiting for?" but that part got left out of the movie. why??

Everything about the movie was FINE, except I was hoping for the much darker ending.

I wish I had read the book

[tornado-96879 · 6/10 · 5 September 2020]

The hardest part about watching this movie was trying to figure out why I was watching it. At the end, I had to look up interpretations, which I think took a lot of the magic and reflection out of what a movie should be. I wish it would've been a little less abstract, for those of us who watched it independently from the book, and aren't abstract minded enough to pull meaning out of thin air.

Other than not knowing what the hell was happening, the acting was phenomenal, and so was the dialogue. Now off to the library to try to get something useful out of this story.

Kaufman Didn't Properly "End Things"

[TheHound16 · 5/10 · 5 September 2020]

I had the pleasure of reading Iain Reid's book a few years ago, and remember devouring it in practically one sitting. The biggest takeaway from me was the incredibly eerie tone throughout, the multitude of questions I had, and then the shocking plot twist that gave the title "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" an entirely new and powerful meaning. I am a fan of Kaufman's work, and was excited when I learned he was adapting this wonderful, creepy, and thought-provoking book. However, after watching it, I feel like his entire approach to the novel was a big mistake and took away most of what made it an entertaining and powerful story. So, before I go into my biggest problems with the way this was handled, I have to say that clearly most of my opinions are based on having read the book beforehand. Therefore, I genuinely cannot say how I would feel about this film if I didn't have that prior knowledge and comparison. Others may very well enjoy this film and think it strong, but compared to the book...well let's get into that.

1) THE TONE My biggest takeaway when reading the book was that, though there was a very strong off-key/strange feeling to the characters and events, you were never entirely sure what was wrong, nor did you fully know it wasn't based in reality. This gave the story a very creepy and unpredictable quality that kept you guessing. Though I have enjoyed Kaufman's surrealist images in his past films - this sense of dream-like scenes - from the first meeting with the parents at the farm, you immediately and undoubtably know this story isn't based in reality. I know this is a deliberate approach Kaufman chose, especially since he continually interweaves it with images of the janitor at the school, but I feel like it takes away from the spine of the story itself. Because of this, the eeriness from the book was largely gone and I found myself less interested in what I was watching because it lacked any grounding.

2) LENGTH/EDITING Much of this film feels very dragged out. I have a high tolerance for what others consider "slower" films, but in this case I feel that every change of scenery (the car, the farm, back to the car, the school) were long, dragged out scenes that could've used with moments of better pacing or editing. For example, in the beginning Buckley's character quotes a poem that she wrote. There were many interesting aspects of this poem, but it began to drag on and I came in and out of focus. Just one example in a film that could've used stronger editing or script tightening.

3) THEMES I give Kaufman credit for taking certain themes in the book, like aging, and crafting impactful commentary on how people are treated, looked at, and how they feel about their own lives as they age. However, I do feel that - though oftentimes beautiful - some of these themes were too on-the-nose at certain points, therefore lessening its impact. I feel this happened more commonly towards the end of the film, once they got to the school (ex. The conversation around "Baby It's Cold Outside" felt more preachy, rather than a genuine conversation, or a written scene that added any original thought to this conversation. Just one example.)

4) THE ENDING This is the biggest problem and why the final shot of this film feels less like a button and more like a "is it over?" Getting back to the book, one of the biggest takeaways from it was the deeply unnerving sense of dread and fear the reader experienced throughout, especially as it continued to crescendo up to the end where a shocking twist was laid out! Basically, the "Lucy" character was in the school, trying to find her boyfriend, and she ended up having to hide from the janitor who seemed like he was going to kill her. I was TERRIFIED while reading it, and had no idea where it was going. Then BAM, the twist ending that the janitor had actually created all of these characters and was writing about them before he committed suicide. Therefore "I'm thinking of ending things" took on an extremely powerful context that you hadn't yet seen, bringing the entire story together and staying with you long after you read it!

Kaufman didn't have ANY of this. There was no real tension once Buckley's character talked to the janitor, and instead poetic images (dancing, choreography, a final musical number, etc) replaced all of this. Similarly to what I said before about being too on-the-nose with themes, we were very hit over the head with the janitor's sense of self, his comparison to the dying, maggot filled pig as he walked naked in the hallway, and then the musical number at the end that went on a bit too long and didn't have a strong enough impact. Also to not have the janitor, at any point say "I'm thinking of ending things" is such a travesty and why the ending doesn't feel tied in properly to the rest of the film.

Listen, the actors were great, as always, visually there were some stunning scenes, the lighting particularly stood out, etc. The big problem was Kaufman twisting this story that worked so well in the book into the story he wanted to tell - he didn't properly honor the source material, and what he did instead didn't work. This sometimes happens with adaptations, especially with an auteur, so I guess I should've expected it. And, again, if you haven't read the book then maybe it is powerful (though I still feel like it needed some editing). However, the original story from the novel was extremely well done, and incredibly creepy and unnerving. Mostly, though, there was a solid climax and jaw-dropping twist that made the whole story complete. Because Kaufman changed the entire ending, and took out all levels of creepiness, there was no actual climax, and I wasn't sure the movie was over until the credits rolled. It's a shame, because the book was great and I don't want people to get the wrong idea about it. Honestly, Kaufman shouldn't have been the one to adapt this, or he should've, at the very least, properly "ended things".

Death is the only answer

[aboalhyjaa · 9/10 · 16 June 2022]

The whole movie is a mix up of imagined and real memories in the janitors head, whom is Jake btw but the whole idea of the movie making us consecrate on the girl who's in fact only in his imagination mad eus believe she's the star!

As we saw in a lot of scenes, she is incredibly confused to find herself aware in this environment and cannot remember her own name or anything about herself. And every now and then there's a new name for her and a new backstory of how they met or what she even do!

Jake is also very confused to find she has gained awareness, as seen when she starts thinking, "I'm thinking of ending things." and he looks over in shock. He thought he was in control of the memory / fantasy, but the characters started acting independently from him. ( side note: I thought when she was thinking of ending things that it meant the relationship, but as the movie played I understood that its Jake thinking of ending life )

He also didn't want her to go into the basement but she disobeyed him. In the basement was his deepest fear. The deepest fear was being a school janitor for the rest of his life and squandering all of his talent and intelligence.

As the movie ends, there are 2 of the last scenes i wanna share my thoughts about. When he was being awarded Nobel prize, I believe the meaning in his head that he believes that actually people deserves a happy endings, just like in movies or books who his whole memories are mixed with! And the audience are all the people that he actually met in his life that left an impact in him, good or not.

The 2nd, and actually is the last scene is where the car was completely covered in snow it references back to the idea of landscape shots without any people in it. We're able to pick up on the sadness of the scene, knowing that the janitor is dead in the car, even though you can't see any people in it.

Bloated, tonally confused and overly nihilistic - still interesting

[consciousgeometry · 6/10 · 14 September 2020]

I thought the pig was very cool. Other than that, the ever compounding navel-gazing nihilism of characters bored with their own inadequacy, and their inability to communicate anything meaningful beyond standard intellectual tropes, was a bummer. The movie -- because otherwise it wouldn't be Kaufman-- is pedantically self-aware, which extends to the protagonists who frequently engage in off-handed existential debates without conviction. Sure, that is kind of the point. But there is something obnoxiously joyless about taking fairly interesting concepts (TV-show plots are like viruses that just want to find a home in our minds/ Peoples' selves are not their 'own creations', and more of a mosaic of opinions and facts they have absorbed from others/etc) and scattering them onto every other scene, merely to have the characters make one more remark upon whose conclusion they can look miserably out the window.

As many have said, the basic idea behind the movie, combined with the apt setting of a road trip, a creepy farm, the rural menacing tedium in general, has a lot of potential to create an unnerving atmosphere. Had the movie been more grounded, had there been more actually coherent scenes --less inter-cutting, fewer abrupt transitions, fewer aggressive 4th wall-breaking-- it might have managed to be unsettling. As Kaufman chose to construct it, it never convinces you (never tries, actually) that anything within it is more than a clever artifice propped up to sermonize about the various dreadful aspects of the human condition. The film can't help but constantly blow its load and become very very explicit about its themes and how much of a surreal fantasy it is, as opposed to a straightforward narrative, so that it rarely manages to create a visceral moment of tension. There's also a weird amnesiac quality to it: Sometimes the narrative will forget about the multitude of loads already blown, and after having served up what seems like a complete deconstruction of the plot, tries to return to a sense of normalcy, as though nothing has happened. At these points, the execution doesn't seem willfully idiosyncratic anymore, and rather just shoddy.

However, by sheer virtue of the great acting and universally relatable themes being brought up over and over again (what is success? aging is scary; dying is scary; being a nobody is scary; what is art; what it's purpose?) it can become 'engrossing' and thought provoking. But even when thoughts were provoked, I felt annoyed at the bluntness and self-indulgence of the scenes giving rise to them. Side-note: visually the movie had some truly high heights, but was as inconsistent as its structure. In my view it should have been much darker, less saturated, which would not only have fit the story better, but also made sense in that the cinematographer already showed the amazing atmospheres he's capable of creating in Ida.

Not that anybody should give a damn, but this may be the movie that makes me change my mind about Kaufman (still, I will always love Being John Malkovich). I read the book only because I heard about this film-project, and even though I wasn't fully amazed by it, it was the much more interesting experience among the two. Whereas the novel had a fresh angle, this just felt like "Kaufman film #X": The protagonists are not people --not even archetypes-- but collections of abstract sentiments; there is dreamlike/meta-stuff, that has an awkward theatrical vibe; everybody is sort of miserable by default; things seem somewhat normal at the beginning, and head towards a crescendo of self-reference and incoherent existential musings.

He did it much better in Synecdoche (in a sense, the protagonists of both stories try to accomplish a similar thing in very different ways). This one feels like a remake of that movie that wasn't constructed from the ground up, but instead injected into and parasitically reared in the body of a pretty decent and sparse, albeit mostly unrelated, horror novel. I think it is worth watching, however, because it's the kind of work whose potency may very much vary, depending on the mood you're in. Being far from an optimistic, jolly person myself, I personally still found myself not only bored, but acutely annoyed, by Kaufman's thousandth attempt to show us the hypocrisy, arbitrariness and wretched misery that is apparently the life of every vaguely self-reflective modern middle class individual.

I've read the book and even I had no idea what was going on

[LittleLotti · 4/10 · 7 September 2020]

This was such a struggle to get through, and very unrewarding for doing so.

Since I've read the book, I knew what was going on. I also had no idea what was going on. Kaufman's adaptation was so bizarre and unforthcoming that it had me constantly checking how much time was left (too much was the answer)..

The first 20 something minutes are PAINFULLY slow, and the chemistry between the two main characters is so nonexistent yet they supposedly have this super deep connection. The character of Jake was so flat and mumbly - nothing like the sophisticated intellectual he was in the novel, but I tried to push that out of my mind. I was rapidly losing interest when the two finally arrived to Jake's parent's house, and there was a moment where I truly thought this movie was going to be incredible. Suddenly I was questioning what I was seeing, the unnervingly strange exchange between characters was unsettling and dread started creeping up in my chest. It stirred up the kind of uneasy feelings I got during my first viewing of Hereditary.

I'm a huge fan of strange movies that feel like a bad dream, not a nightmare necessarily, but a dream where things make sense but don't at the same time, and you have a pit in your stomach but don't know why. I like subtle strangeness, enough to pique your interest without beating you over the head with it. Unfortunately there quickly came a point when this movie catapulted over that fine line and became so frustratingly bizarre. It felt like it was trying to be Mulholland Drive. I am all for a strange trip of a movie but it has to be coherent enough to make sense in some way. If I didn't read the book I would have no idea what this movie meant or what was really happening, it just became too ridiculous for me to enjoy.

I presume people will talk about how bizarre it is on social media which will make people curious enough to watch it, but it was so unsatisfying and an overall waste of time.

A confused man's sorrowful tale (my brief interpretation)

[DinosaurAct86 · 10/10 · 6 September 2020]

I understand why people dislike this movie. Most people don't like to be an active participant in what we've been trained to think of as a passive medium-and that's okay, but don't judge an "active" movie as poorly made just because you prefer "passive" ones.

If you are willing to actively watch and interpret what's going on with openness, you may reach the same conclusions as I have. I think this movie does make sense once you realize whose story it is.

Jake is the janitor. Jake has either dementia or Alzheimer's, which can be genetic and was perhaps passed down from his father. This entire film is the attempted reconstruction of the past by someone with a confused mind, one that misremembers names, timelines, and details, but distinctly remembers movie monologues and musical numbers. The final scene, of course, never happens: it's a word-for-word (and nearly shot-for-shot remake) of the final scene of A Beautiful Mind followed by a musical number from Oklahoma. This is the ending he wanted. But that's not what really happened to him.

What really happened, then? Jake cleaned the school during the blizzard, ate his lunch and watched a sappy comedy, then went off the mental deep end in his truck, where he sadly froze to death, only to be (presumably) found by the oncoming snow plow we hear in the end credits. During all of this, he's remembering a girl he met briefly at a bar, one who he's loved all his life but never spent it with. He never even learned her name. There were other women, like Lucy and Yvonne, but none of them matched how he felt about this unnamed girl. She's the one he hopes he could bring home to Mom and Dad, but he ends up piecing together experiences with other women to inform his vision of this girl with his family.

Once I put all of this together, I realized just how devastating this movie is. It really got to me. Kauffman is a genius. It's okay if you didn't like it, but know that real thought and heart went into this.

I was visiting the inlaws late one night when my eyes beheld a surreal sight

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 10 May 2022]

Anyone who's seen Charlie Kaufman's movies knows that he likes to play with the audience. In "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation", "Synecdoche, New York" and "Anomalisa", it's often hard to tell what's real and what isn't. Such is the case in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things". This mind-bending look at a young woman who has a bizarre experience visiting her boyfriend's parents is enough to make you question your own sanity (especially the last twenty minutes).

It's not a great movie - it drags on a bit too long - but just see if you don't end up wondering what you just watched. Surrealism to the extreme, with Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, David Thewlis and Toni Collette putting on fine performances.

I hated every moment of this excruciating movie.

[simonmpower · 1/10 · 7 September 2020]

I felt like this movie was cobbled together by a second year English major that was given way too much marching powder over a long weekend. It is the most pretentious drivel I have ever had the displeasure of watching. The only accomplishment was made by the editors of the trailer that managed to make the film look enticing. They should either get an award or be brought up on fraud charges.

I don't know what I watched

[Gordon-11 · 7 September 2020]

The story gets increasingly more bizarre. There are no explanations or closures either. I honestly don't know what I watched.

Perfection

[jlcp-photo · 7/10 · 6 September 2020]

I read the book in one sitting. I was apprehensive about how it would play out as a movie. They did a lot of it differently, but for me, it evoked many of the same emotions I had at the end of the book - especially because I understood where it was going. I think this was a beautiful movie.

To sum it up as best I can: It's an ode to loneliness. It is a memorial and a fantasy of all the people we could have been, and the lives we could have had, if only we had found a true connection with someone else.

I loved it, but I get why others hated it

[lusitanamike2 · 9/10 · 5 September 2020]

It's not an easy movie to get through and it is definitely one to divide the audience. The movie is labeled as a drama and thriller, which can be misleading because its more of a psychological horror. It delves into the mind of a lonely janitor (Jake) with themes of regret, loneliness, and ageism. I won't leave any spoilers for those who want to watch it, but word of advice....if you enjoy slow movies with deep philosophical conversations this is your movie. For those who are looking for jump scares and twists, skip it and save yourself 2 hours.

Charlie Kaufman is a genius, or for those who watched it, a "genus"

I'm Thinking of Ending Things

[forthemovies · 7/10 · 24 February 2022]

A woman contemplates ending her relationship with her new boyfriend. Strange scenarios occur throughout her thoughts.

Based on the novel written by Iain Reid and directed by Charlie Kaufman, the theory of the film suggests the theme of emotional trauma. How our emotional connections to people become weak due to traumatic experiences. The film explores janitor jakes fictional life he imagines in his head. How a lifetime of loneliness and emotional trauma impairs the mind. The exploration of how his vision of his life he wished he fulfilled as he narrates and daydreams his vision throughout the film. The film was engaging to a sense of uncertainty. The suspense of what was going on was both interesting and incomprehensible at the same time. The performances from both the main cast were great. The chemistry between the two was good. Jesse Plemons's portrayal of Jakes's awkward tone throughout the film was played perfectly and Jessie Buckley's portrayal of Lucy's fear of uncertainty was exhibited well.

The film was a difficult film to understand, but it's one of those psychological thrillers that have an interesting dark, twisted concept to engage in.

I wish I could unsee this movie

[davidchubey · 1/10 · 5 September 2020]

What a pompous load of trash. A film so arrogantly caught up in trying to be artistic and interesting, leaves you with Nothing instead... I even went looking to see if their was some great insight I missed, that was simply more time lost. I imagine groups of people reading in all sorts of interpretations of the events, patting themselves on the back for their elevated understanding of the events..in this case the king has no clothes, stop trying to see what is not there... And how can I unsee that movie.... I want my 2 hours back.

The more I understand it, the less I like it

[miguelreyna60 · 8/10 · 5 September 2020]

Actually the more I think about this film the less I enjoy it. I keep thinking about how Kaufman could've made this one of the most upsetting/disturbing movies ever made. It's creepy, thats for sure. But instead, he chooses to simply thread surreal/disturbing set pieces together with ruminations on art and media that comes off as incredibly self indulgent. I get what he's going for, I understand why he does it. But it's not something that I walk away from satisfied. I simply walk away exhausted and slightly annoyed. The first half of the film is so brilliant in comparison to the last half. A meditation on the ugliness of a "pathetic", sad person's life, a meditation on memory and its destruction, on lost chances and false hopes, on the sheer ugliness of the maggots that feed on the underbelly of a life led wrong. The atmosphere was so thick it could be cut with a knife. The feeling of going inside an abandoned farmhouse during a blizzard that lacerates and seeing all the sad, desperate ghosts of the pasts walking along empty corridors on a loop looking for something but finding nothing. Its the emotions that the songs of The Caretaker evokes transferred into film format. But that second half slowly trails off into the annoying and self indulgent. I'm sorry, but I just don't think having a character recite the entirety of Pauline Kael's negative review of A Woman Under the Influnce for like six minutes is particularly clever or interesting, no matter how much Charlie Kaufman may think it is.

More of a companion piece than a stand alone film

[kay_rock · 7/10 · 7 September 2020]

This movie cannot stand alone. It is meaningless if you have not read the book. Kaufman spectacularly fails to bring the book to life as an independent story.

But the "spectacularly" in that sentence is not entirely about the failure... rather that he fails while presenting something rather spectacular. The film is gloriously beautiful in the way he brings symbolism and metaphor to life. It is gorgeously filmed and very well acted, although the pacing and editing could use a little less ego and a little more attention to flow. Other directors may have made some different choices in presenting those things that were more grounded in reality as opposed to those that were surreal. Instead, the whole thing was presented in such a state of hyperreality that finding the kernels of truth were impossible.

The biggest failures come in the stark omissions: Kaufman's refusal to share what question is being referred to in those phone calls where the disembodied voice says "there is only one question..." That question is critical and is specifically laid out in the book. It is the entire meaning and motivation. He also fails to ever tie back that question, and the titular phrase, to the only character to whom they actually matter. He also fails to show or explain explicitly what happened to that character in the end, and without that ending, there is no meaning. The film just becomes a very beautiful companion piece to the novel, highlighting some scenes and lending new imagery to them. It is not, in itself, a complete story. It's more of a "mood."

I'm Thinking of Ending watching movies for a month..

[OzoneParkSteve · 1/10 · 5 September 2020]

This movie was so bad, 2 hours and 14 minutes of my life wasted....I'm thinking of not watching another movie for a month.

Mind Officially Blown

[evanston_dad · 8/10 · 11 September 2020]

Charlie Kaufman channels David Lynch in this eerie, creepy relationship drama that really knows how to get under your skin.

Jessie Buckley, who gave an award-worthy performance in "Wild Rose" last year, does so again here, as a woman meeting her boyfriend's parents for the first time. Much of the film takes place in his car, as they travel to and from his childhood home in an Oklahoma blizzard. These scenes give Buckley and Jessie Plemmons, also giving a terrific performance as her boyfriend, long exchanges of dialogue that tease out the dynamic of this particular relationship, and the dynamic between men and women in general, and a dissection of the film "A Woman Under the Influence" (Buckley recites Pauline Kael's review of the film in character as Gena Rowlands), and includes a stop at an isolated ice cream stand, the film's most Lynchian moment, where a girl with a rash gives Buckley a vague warning. Much of the rest of the film takes place in Plemmons' parents house, where David Thewlis and Toni Collette play versions of Plemmons' mom and dad at all ages, from perky housewife to doddering dementia to dying in a hospital bed, and host perhaps one of the most awkward dinners ever to appear in a film. Then there are the scenes set in Plemmons' old high school, where a janitor (Plemmons as an old man?) roams the halls and doubles of Buckley and Plemmons reenact the ballet scene from "Oklahoma!" in the school corridors.

What is "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" about? If that's the first question you ask before deciding whether or not to watch a movie, you won't like this one. I imagine different people will think it's about different things. Certainly it's about getting old. It's also about getting old without the comfort of believing that life has any purpose, or that there's anything waiting for us in the great beyond. It's about women and their relationships with men. It's about Jessie Buckley's character. Until it's not and it's instead about Jessie Plemmons' character, who gets the final scene of the film all to himself, a rendition of the song "Lonely Room" (again from "Oklahoma!") during which he comes to the conclusion that the fantasies on which we build our lives don't exist and we have to take whatever we can to most closely approximate them. It's a claustrophobic and deeply unsettling film, as much because of its aesthetics as because of its enigmatic mysteries.

Is it a good film? I think it's very good, but I will admit that it didn't linger in my head as much as I thought it would while I was watching it. It kind of made my skin crawl in the moment, but it left me feeling like I was going to get all there was to get from it on a first viewing, and it didn't leave me wanting to watch it again to untangle its riddles.

Grade: A

"I'm Thinking of Ending Things"

[Aziz24 · 7/10 · 8 November 2020]

A young woman travels with her new boyfriend to his parents' secluded farm. Upon arriving, she comes to question everything she thought she knew about him, and herself. (Via IMDb)

This might be the highest rating I give for a movie that I did not enjoy AT ALL. After I read some explanations about the movie I kind of loved it more but it was still one of the most boring movies I have ever seen.

The movie is so deep and it will make the audience very confused after they watch it, but that "confusion" was too much and over the limit in the movie. Sometimes you don't want to confuse the audience too much so the movie won't be boring to them and that's what happened to me in the movie, I got really bored that I couldn't wait for it to end, felt like the movie was 6 hours especially that the movie is very deep and heavy.

The film's runtime was the worst thing about it, 2h 14m is A LOT, I think if it was decreased to 1h 45m then it would have been better.

Although I didn't enjoy the movie at all, the film's cinematography, sound effects, set design, and custom designs are the ones that made me give the movie a rating of 7/10. The fact that it is a 4:3 frame makes it deeper, scarier, and way better, you will feel scared and confused because that frame is so narrow so it will build a lot of weird feeling inside of you. The film has a few frames that were very great and visually stunning. The different customs of "The Girlfriend" were beautiful, especially that one at the very beginning of the film when she was wearing a red coat. The design of the house was incredible. And the sound effects which gave the movie that scary taste, the sound of the wind or snow, the chains, and the windshield wipers were all some amazing details especially that the movie did not have a specific music soundtrack album.

The script was well written especially that it was written by the amazing Charlie Kaufman who is one of my favs. screenwriters. The movie had many lines and quotes that were so deep but the dialogues were sometimes very long which made some of them look boring because it's been going for a long time. Not saying that I did not enjoy these monologues, they were just too long.

The cast was perfect especially Jessie Buckley, she played her character very well and exactly how it should be played. Toni Collette (Plays The Mother) and David Thewlis (Plays The Father) were incredible especially Toni Collette's weird / scary / loud laugh.

"I'm Thinking of Ending Things" was quite a boring / long movie that I expected more from it. The movie did a great job of being scary and leaving the audience with many questions but I was expecting more.

My rating is 7/10

Stractab & Multidementianal...

[Xstal · 4/10 · 4 September 2020]

I could only conclude this plays out in the mind of someone suffering immense mental torment coupled with severe psychiatric disorders - maybe that was the point!

I can watch Jessie Buckley all day and she is outstanding but: the narrative gave me little or no value and you at least need to have something to hang your hat on - the end completely spoiled the experience, what little there was. Yes, we can all conjure up coded, clever and complex interpretations on a life; distort them to our hearts content - but they need to anchor themselves on something you might reflect on as reality, or we might as well interpret the dreams of pigs to make sense of our own world.

... and if, as several reviews suggest, you need to read the book to get a grasp on what we have seen, or you will see (never had to read the manual for a film before), that need lays fairly and squarely at the table of the director and writers, who were unable to make a successful and satisfactory transfer. It results in a very abstract but ultimately selfish and disconnected illusion.