A most unlikely offering from writer-director Charlie Kaufman, who’s known for scripting comedic befuddlers like BEING JOHN MALKOVITCH, ADAPTATION and THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS is an adaptation of Iain Reid’s 2016 literary horror novel, to which Kaufman contributed an enthusiastic cover blurb (“an ingeniously twisted nightmare road trip through the fragile psyches of two young lovers. My kind of fun!”).
The novel is a tightly constructed piece of work that contains a handful of well-worn horrific set ups—exploring a creepy house, finding oneself stuck in a place where everyone seems to known more than you, being left alone in a car at night—amid a great deal of philosophical chatter (thus justifying the “literary” label). Unfortunately the climax, in which a reality-altering twist is disclosed, isn’t particularly well pulled-off, leaving us with more questions than answers (check out Robert Cormier’s classic YA novel I AM THE CHEESE for how to do this sort of thing right).
This film, the third to be directed by Kaufman, appeared in September 2020 (roughly three months after Kaufman’s debut novel ANTKIND). The distributor was Netflix, who deserve credit for taking it on in the wake of Kaufman’s previous directorial efforts SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008) and ANOMALISA (2015), both of which flopped. That’s not a reflection on their quality, but on the fact that both were resolutely strange and non-commercial films; the same is true of I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS, which stands as a fascinating oddity and, unfortunately, the least successful of the three. But even a lesser Kaufman offering warrants a recommendation.
It begins with an unidentified young waitress embarking on a road trip with her boyfriend Jake during a snowstorm. As conveyed by her voiceover narration, we learn that the woman is enamored with Jake but “thinking of ending things.” She also intones a poem about loneliness and disconnection (“Bonedog” by Eva H.D.) directly to the camera. They eventually reach their destination: Jake’s parents’ house, a creepy place with suspicious scratches on the walls and middle-aged inhabitants who fit in quite well with the décor.
All this is intercut with scenes of an elderly janitor going about his rounds in a high school, and at one point watching the conclusion of a rom-com that (as this film-within-a-film’s end credits inform us) was directed by Robert Zemeckis. This film involves an attractive young man in love with an attractive young waitress, played by performers who closely resemble Jake and his GF.
Back in Jake’s parents’ house the woman finds herself afflicted with calls from an unidentified male someone who leaves cryptic messages—messages that seem to have been cut from the same cloth as her earlier poetic monologue. Further weirdness is evident in Jake’s parents’ odd tendency to suddenly appear and disappear, and equally suddenly turn into decrepit geriatrics. Also glimpsed in the house is a book of reviews by Pauline Kael, whose writings about A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974) are quoted at length by the young woman.
Later, as they drive back in the snowy night, Jake insists upon stopping off at an ice cream stand. Here Jake references Anna Kavan’s ICE and his GF confronts three seriously weird young women employees. There follows another stretch on the road, during which Jake quotes from THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE and then inexplicably insists on taking them to an old high school he attended. This leads to a discussion about the #MeToo connotations of “Baby, it’s Cold Outside” and a fateful exploration of the school, where the janitor seen earlier reappears, and the secret at the heart of all this is made even more secretive.
In adapting this material Kaufman was stuck with a near-insurmountable challenge, given that it’s heavily dialogue driven and takes place largely in a car. Not that this is in any way a straight adaptation, with Kaufman doing to Iain Reid’s novel essentially what he did to Susan Orlean’s THE ORCHID THIEF in ADAPTATION. Unlike the novel, the film has a self-aware tone that occasionally, as in the film-within-a-film sequence, sprouts into full-blown Kaufman-esque comedy.
Also featured is some decidedly un-Kaufman-like artiness, such as an Antonioni-esque pan to an empty room that occurs just before the protagonists step into it and the varying sound levels heard in a basement sequence. Such formalistic weirdness only grows more acute as the film advances, and culminates in a climax whose particulars—which include incongruous dance numbers, a cartoon pig and a sudden jump forward in time—will be completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t read the novel (we never learn why it is, for instance, that the female lead goes unnamed).
Praise is due the lead actors Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley, both of whom fit into this bizarre phantasmagoria quite well (although as Jake’s mother Toni Collette overacts shamelessly). Not that this does much to counteract the film’s biggest problem: the hellaciously protracted 135 minute runtime, which is especially galling given that the novel it adapts is quite short.
Vital Statistics
I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS
Netflix
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Producers: Anthony Bregman, Charlie Kaufman, Robert Salerno, Stefanie Azpiazu
Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman
(Based on a novel by Iain Reid)
Cinematography: Lukasz Zai
Editing: Robert Frazen
Cast: Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd, Hadley Robinson, Gus Birney, Abby Quinn, Colby Minifie, Anthony Robert Grasso, Teddy Coluca, Jason Ralph, Oliver Platt, Frederick E. Wodin, Ryan Steele, Unity Phelan