In an age of unpredictability throughout the movie industry, Charlie Kaufman once again proves that his penchant for unpredictable storytelling is one of cinema’s last remaining constants.
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is the latest film from writer/director Charlie Kaufman, best known for writing abstract and surreal classics such as “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” This is his third directorial effort following the incredibly abstract “Synecdoche, New York” in 2008 and the Oscar-nominated “Anomalisa” in 2015. His latest film, however, is his first to be exclusively streamed, debuting on Netflix on Sept. 4.
The film, based on a novel of the same name, is a story about a young couple who drive through an impending snowstorm to visit the boyfriend’s parents at a secluded farmhouse. While the concept sounds familiar and nonthreatening on the surface, the story is warped through the lens of Kaufman’s vision, making it a film that demands to be rewatched and deeply analyzed.
Something viewers will pick up on instantly is an underlying sense of discomfort, captured expertly through Kaufman’s nightmarish visuals and intimate sound design. While the film bills itself as a “psychological horror,” there is nothing outwardly terrifying about it. It instead chooses to subvert traditional horror tropes in exchange for elevating the horror found in the universe’s minute details — a choice that is bound to make audiences’ skins crawl for the entire two-hour runtime.
Kaufman plays with elements of nature like snow, fog and wind to build a dreamlike universe that is both stark and infinite. The dialogue is profoundly awkward to display a clear disconnect between the film’s two lead characters, delivered brilliantly by Jesse Plemons (“Breaking Bad,” “Black Mirror”) and Jessie Buckley (“Chernobyl,” “Fargo”).
One thing Kaufman is well known for is his abstract metacommentary on the human condition, and this film is no exception. Themes in this movie range from age, loneliness, mental illness and regret. Without revealing too many spoilers, the film dives into the psyche of one character as they reconcile with events over the course of their life that have left them in a fragile mental state. It’s hard to know how much is real and how much is purely a figment of the main character’s imagination, but a lot of the fun that comes from dissecting the film is attempting to distinguish between the two.
The biggest downsides to the film, especially to an audience that is not used to Kaufman’s style, are the drawn-out sequences of dialogue contained to one specific location. A large amount of the film’s runtime takes place inside a car with the two main characters, and the nauseating philosophical breakdowns of poetry, pop culture, and humanity can become exhausting.
Regardless, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a cryptic, hypnotic, often funny, but mostly unsettling film that asks more questions than it answers. It’s a film that toes the line between near unwatchability and infinite rewatchability in a way only Charlie Kaufman can achieve.
Rating: 9/10