I remember reading the book I’m Thinking of Ending Things about a year ago and thinking to myself, “I have no idea what’s going on right now, but I’m absolutely terrified.” The movie, thankfully, does a very good job of capturing that unnerving, disjointed feel. It took me a little while to put all my thoughts together after viewing the movie (even though I had read the book beforehand), but I feel like at this point I can give a good description of my thoughts and emotions toward the piece. I also read up on an interview with the director so I’ll be able to explain the doozy of an ending to anyone who was just as confused as I was after the first viewing. I could spend thousands of words breaking down the movie piece by piece, but I’m just going to touch on a few of my favorite things to keep this concise. There’s also going to be a lot of explaining being done, just because I feel like I can’t exactly describe why I like parts of the film unless I reveal the meaning behind them.
One of the feats that made I’m Thinking of Ending Things so memorable as a book was its flawless execution of something called the “unreliable narrator.” In layman’s terms, this is when the protagonist of the book describes things to the audience in an inaccurate or untrue way. Sometimes they’re doing it on purpose — other times, they’re just so out of their minds that they can’t tell what’s fact from what’s fiction. Some examples of this are the classic pieces Crime and Punishment and Lolita, as well as the more current novel You. I wasn’t sure how the movie was going to be able to portray this on screen, but the way they did it was actually quite clever.
The main plot of the story revolves around a girl named Lucy going to visit her boyfriend’s family for the first time. Throughout the film, there are countless inconsistencies, ranging from minor things such as changes in outfit or hairstyle to people drastically changing ages between scenes. At one point, Lucy’s boyfriend, Jake, even calls her by the wrong name. Overall, I thought this was an extremely interesting technique that made me want to pay attention to every detail on screen.
Another major connection throughout the movie is how media and art is infused into and used by each of the characters. There are repetitive references to books, movies, and music that keep coming up time and time again. There isn’t one scene without some sort of reference to art or theater or some other kind of artistic piece. Directors often make references to their inspirations for the film in subtle ways, so at first I thought that that was what it was. But I quickly realized that there was much more to this than a clever director making a nod to some of their favorite works.
Alright, now I’m going to explain the most confusing part of the movie: the ending. Everything starts to go downhill when Lucy and Jake arrive at Jake’s old high school. Lucy eventually wanders inside and she finds an old janitor. This is the same janitor that she’s been having flashes of throughout the film. He’s been seen watching the pair, even peering through cracks in walls. His presence, although not necessarily understood, was constant throughout the film up to that point. And this is where it all comes together.
The main plot-twist of the story is that Lucy and Jake aren’t actually real. I know, that sounds crazy, but I can explain. This entire time, they’ve been a part of the janitor’s imagination. Although we don’t know exactly why the janitor felt the need to come up with these characters and live vicariously through them, he’s obviously experienced some trauma that has seriously affected him. That explains the inconsistencies within the characters and scenes: he’s making all of this up in his head. That explains the references to art: these are all things that he’s enjoyed and he keeps putting them in Lucy’s and Jake’s “lives.” That also explains why there’s a random monologue from the musical Oklahoma toward the end of the movie: because this is all in his mind, he can make reality anything he wants it to be.
But what happens to the janitor at the end of the movie? He’s seen walking to his car, stripping to the nude, walking through the school with a cartoon pig, and then the movie ends with the monologue. According to the director Charlie Kaufman, the janitor eventually did die in his car from a stroke/heart attack, even though it isn’t immediately clear to the audience. Him walking with the pig and experiencing the monologue were the last moments of his life, the last of his memories bobbing to the surface so he can relive them one more time before moving on. When you start to look at the last 15 minutes or so through that lens, it all starts to make a lot more sense.
I’ve done a lot of explaining in this review, but let me actually give my thoughts. Overall, I thought the film was extremely well-done and artistic. It was an interesting, mind-bending piece that I couldn’t stop watching and thinking about for days afterward. To be honest, I was annoyed with it at first because I couldn’t understand what I had just witnessed. But after giving it some thought, I began to appreciate it so much more. It reminds me a lot of some of my other favorite psychological thrillers, like Midsommar or Hereditary. These movies aren’t necessarily liked or appreciated by all, but they’re completely unique and truly stand apart from their respective genres.
Honestly, there was no way I was going to do a perfect job of describing this movie. The only way you can really understand what I was talking about is to see it for yourself. What I explained was just the bare-bones of a much more complex piece, and it is truly a work of art. I’m going to end this with a quote from a review of this movie by one of my favorite reviewers, Karsten Runquist. I think he describes the film best in this single line: “The horror of I’m Thinking of Ending Things is thinking itself.”
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