The Endless (2017)

Directed by: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead | 111 minutes | horror, science fiction | Actors: Callie Hernandez, James Jordan, Emily Montague, Tate Ellington, Lew Temple, Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, Kira Powell, Ric Sarabia, Vinny Curran, Shane Brady, David Lawson Jr., Peter Cilella, Glen Roberts, Greg Marcks

What exactly goes wrong with ‘The Endless’ (2017)? The beginning is intriguing: two brothers receive a message on an old videotape from the “suicide cult” they were rescued from years ago. Apparently the commune still exists and everyone is doing well. Contemplating their meager lives as faceless wage slaves since the time they fled, the brothers decide to return to the commune to take a closer look. Was it all that bad?

And while the two men make it a getaway and can laugh about their bizarre past, the viewer soon gets the feeling that something is supernaturally wrong. Birds in the shape of an eye are circling in the sky, the same shape we saw on a video tape image. Is it an omen or are they being watched? So far ‘The Endless’ is pleasantly predictable, there is no viewer who does not realize from the first second that the brothers should have stayed at home. Once arrived at the joyous community, this cult will reveal its true face in slow, gruesome steps. However?

That’s right, but once there, it seems like the cult is made up of the friends of the directors who have taken up residence in the summer camp of the comedy ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ (2001). A group of thirty-somethings hanging out in the hills of California — that familiar landscape of dusty sand and barren bushes that we know from so many cheap American movies and series set in the comfortable vicinity of the production company — singing songs in the evenings in a shack that someone has forgotten to furnish. At no point do you get the feeling that you are dealing with a real commune; these people quickly parked here with a shovel and a guitar. If the film illusion of this commune is not even credible, what is left for the denouement?

The directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who also play the two brothers, have fashionably solved the constraints of their limited budget: make it an intelligent horror, you hardly need any special effects, and that one or two scare effects for that. in the trailer just let you come out of the computer. An intelligent story does not cost money, but apparently it requires a lot of talking. A lot, in fact. For over an hour and a half, the brothers chatted carefree — as if they were still having coffee in Starbucks with a blank sheet of paper — their way through a story with a seemingly chilling horrific secret, and with wise coming of age life lessons from and for the millennial generation. .