 |
| Movies Like It Ends You Need to Watch Next. (Photo: IMDb) |
If It Ends left you staring at the nearest empty road wondering whether taking a wrong turn is ever worth it again, there is plenty more unsettling viewing waiting around the corner. The 2026 independent horror-thriller from Alexander Ullom turns a simple late-night drive into an existential nightmare, trapping four recent graduates inside a Jeep Cherokee on a two-lane road that simply refuses to end. With its combination of liminal space, psychological pressure, surreal science fiction and very dark humour, it belongs to a particularly strange corner of cinema where the road is endless, reality is unreliable and stopping the car is apparently the worst possible idea.
Starring Phinehas Yoon as James, Akira Jackson as Day, Noah Toth as Fisher and Mitchell Cole as Tyler, It Ends uses its deliberately restricted setting to explore post-graduation uncertainty and the frightening possibility of being stuck in a future you cannot quite understand.
The film premiered at SXSW in March 2025 before its wider theatrical release through NEON, and its premise has naturally sent viewers looking for movies with similarly impossible journeys, fractured realities and characters who discover that the universe has apparently stopped following its own rules.
The good news is that cinema has been surprisingly committed to making roads, houses, fields, rooms and even dinner parties deeply suspicious places. Some of these films lean harder into horror, others favour science fiction or psychological mystery, but all share something with It Ends: a group of people enters an apparently ordinary situation and gradually discovers that escaping it is going to be considerably harder than expected.
Movies Like IT ENDS
1. Dead End (2003)
Dead End is arguably one of the closest matches to It Ends, because its entire premise revolves around a seemingly ordinary road becoming an impossible trap. A family travelling on Christmas Eve takes a shortcut through a forest and soon discovers that the road does not behave as it should. Every attempt to understand where they are only makes the situation more disturbing, while a mysterious black car and a strange woman add to the sense that something is very wrong.
The similarity is obvious but effective: both films take the most mundane form of travel imaginable and turn it into a nightmare without a reliable destination.
Like It Ends, Dead End also uses the confined experience of travelling through darkness to gradually wear down its characters. The road is no longer taking them somewhere; it has effectively become the entire world.
2. The Incident (2014)
Mexican science-fiction thriller The Incident takes the idea of an endless journey and pushes it into properly surreal territory. One of its stories follows characters trapped on an apparently endless staircase, while another centres on people stuck on a seemingly infinite road. They keep moving, yet the environment refuses to provide an actual way out.
That makes it an excellent follow-up for anyone fascinated by the mechanics of It Ends. Both films ask what happens when familiar physical rules quietly stop working.
There is no convenient exit sign waiting around the next bend, and the characters are forced to confront the psychological consequences of being trapped somewhere that should not logically exist.
3. Southbound (2015)
Southbound is an anthology rather than a single continuous story, but its desert highway setting gives it a strong connection to It Ends. The film follows several travellers whose stories overlap as they move through a strange stretch of road populated by unsettling encounters and increasingly bizarre situations.
What makes it particularly suitable is the way the road becomes more than scenery. It feels like a place with its own rules, almost as though the characters have crossed into a separate reality without receiving the courtesy of an explanation. Like It Ends, Southbound combines isolation, repetition and dread while making the simple act of continuing forward feel increasingly questionable.
4. Vivarium (2019)
Vivarium swaps an infinite country road for an eerily identical suburban development, but the underlying nightmare is remarkably similar. A young couple visits a new housing estate while looking for a home, only to discover that every street and house looks exactly the same. Worse still, every attempt to leave simply brings them back to where they started.
The film shares It Ends' fascination with liminal spaces and futures that seem to have become prisons. Both stories place ordinary people inside environments that look recognisable enough to understand but fundamentally refuse to operate normally.
There is also a particularly nasty joke at the centre of both films: adulthood is already confusing enough without the universe deciding to make it physically impossible to escape.
5. In the Tall Grass (2019)
Based on the novella by Stephen King and Joe Hill, In the Tall Grass begins when two siblings hear a child calling for help from a huge field. They enter the grass and quickly discover that the landscape does not obey normal ideas of distance, direction or time.
The connection to It Ends comes through the breakdown of physical space. Characters can be standing close together while remaining impossible to reach, while paths that should lead somewhere simply return them to danger. Both films turn an apparently straightforward journey into a surreal puzzle where moving forward does not necessarily mean getting anywhere.
6. Cube (1997)
Cube traps a group of strangers inside a vast structure made from interconnected cubic rooms. Each room looks deceptively simple, but the characters soon realise they must understand the structure's mathematical patterns if they have any hope of finding a way out.
The setting is completely different from It Ends, yet the storytelling philosophy is strikingly similar. The characters are trapped inside a system they barely understand, and survival depends on figuring out its rules while interpersonal tensions steadily become another obstacle. If James' constant attempts to logically decode the endless road were one of your favourite parts of It Ends, Cube is an obvious next stop.
7. Coherence (2013)
A dinner party becomes something considerably stranger in Coherence, when a comet passes overhead and a power outage coincides with increasingly disturbing changes in reality. The group begins encountering evidence that other versions of themselves may exist nearby, turning an ordinary evening into an increasingly complicated puzzle.
Like It Ends, the film gets much of its tension from watching ordinary people try to rationalise something that should not be possible.
The characters are not action heroes with a secret manual explaining the situation. They are simply trying to work out what is happening while their trust in one another begins to deteriorate, which is generally not ideal when reality itself has become unreliable.
8. Triangle (2009)
Triangle follows a group of friends whose sailing trip takes a disturbing turn after they encounter an abandoned ocean liner. Once aboard, the characters begin experiencing events that suggest they are trapped inside a repeating cycle where actions, identities and consequences become increasingly difficult to separate.
Its biggest connection with It Ends is repetition. Both films create the unnerving sensation that escape may only lead back to the beginning. Christopher Smith's film also rewards viewers who enjoy piecing together the rules of an impossible situation, although it is probably best experienced with as little prior information about its twists as possible.
9. The Endless (2017)
The Endless follows two brothers who return to a mysterious community they previously escaped. What initially appears to be an unusual but harmless group gradually reveals something far stranger, with people seemingly caught inside repeating cycles of time.
For It Ends viewers, this is one of the strongest recommendations because it explores the same fascination with repetition and existence inside an environment operating according to rules beyond human understanding.
The film also has a dry, understated sense of humour that prevents the surrealism from becoming relentlessly gloomy. It is strange, thoughtful and increasingly unsettling in exactly the right proportions.
10. Resolution (2012)
Resolution, from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, begins with a man attempting to help his troubled friend in an isolated cabin. What follows becomes an increasingly peculiar mystery involving strange objects, unexplained events and the possibility that the characters are somehow being observed or controlled.
Its connection to It Ends is less about an endless road and more about the creeping discovery that reality may have a structure the characters cannot see. The film also shares that pleasingly awkward mixture of serious existential questions and moments that make you wonder whether you should laugh or simply stare at the screen for a few seconds.
11. Skinamarink (2022)
Skinamarink takes the concept of being trapped somewhere familiar and strips it down to its most abstract form. Two children wake up to discover that the doors and windows of their home have disappeared, leaving them inside a dark, increasingly unknowable environment.
It is considerably more experimental than It Ends, but the connection lies in the liminal atmosphere. Both films transform familiar spaces into places that feel subtly but profoundly incorrect. There is little comfort in knowing what a road, a house or a forest should look like when the rules governing those spaces have apparently vanished.
12. Infinity Chamber (2016)
In Infinity Chamber, a man wakes inside an automated detention facility and attempts to understand why he is there and how the seemingly intelligent system controlling the environment works. The story gradually becomes a puzzle about memory, identity, technology and perception.
Fans of It Ends may appreciate its emphasis on confinement and problem-solving. The protagonist cannot simply walk outside and demand an explanation, so he has to understand the environment from inside the trap. It shares the same appealing question: if the world around you has stopped making sense, how do you know which parts of your own understanding can still be trusted?
13. The Similars (2015)
Mexican science-fiction thriller The Similars takes place during a stormy night inside a bus station, where several strangers become caught up in an increasingly bizarre phenomenon involving identity and duplication.
The film has a similarly claustrophobic approach to storytelling, with characters confined to one location while trying to understand an impossible situation. Like It Ends, it uses ordinary people rather than traditional heroic figures, allowing confusion and suspicion to become major parts of the tension.
14. YellowBrickRoad (2010)
YellowBrickRoad begins with a group investigating a mysterious disappearance involving an entire town that apparently followed a remote trail into the wilderness decades earlier. The expedition soon discovers that the trail is not quite the ordinary hiking route they expected.
This is an especially good recommendation for viewers who liked the idea of an apparently straightforward route becoming an impossible journey. Like It Ends, the film uses a path through an isolated environment as a mechanism for gradually breaking down the characters' sense of security. The further they travel, the less certain they become about what they have actually entered.
15. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The Blair Witch Project may not involve an infinite road, but its central idea of becoming hopelessly lost in a familiar natural environment makes it a natural companion to It Ends. Three filmmakers enter a forest to investigate a local legend and soon realise that finding their way back is much harder than expected.
Both films understand that isolation can be more frightening than spectacle. The forest surrounding the characters becomes a psychological pressure cooker, and the lack of reliable information allows fear to fill in the gaps. In It Ends, the road keeps going; here, the problem is that the characters cannot confidently determine where they are.
16. 1408 (2007)
1408 confines its protagonist to a single hotel room that behaves in increasingly impossible ways. Author Mike Enslin believes he can rationally explain the room's reputation, but the environment quickly begins challenging every assumption he has.
The similarity to It Ends comes from the idea of a contained location becoming a complete reality of its own. Both films trap their protagonists somewhere that should be temporary but instead becomes impossible to escape. The difference is that 1408 puts the nightmare behind a hotel door, while It Ends effectively puts it behind the steering wheel.
17. Mine Games (2012)
Mine Games follows a group of friends who discover an abandoned mine while travelling together, only for their trip to become a strange time-loop mystery involving their own identities and actions.
Its appeal for It Ends fans comes from the combination of friendship-group tension and increasingly complicated repetition. The characters are forced to confront the possibility that the events happening around them are connected in ways they cannot immediately understand. As with It Ends, being trapped is only half the problem; understanding why you are trapped is the part that really ruins everyone's evening.
18. The Oregonian (2011)
The Oregonian follows a woman travelling through a remote area who becomes involved in a surreal series of encounters after a roadside incident. The film moves from recognisable reality into increasingly bizarre territory, with its isolated landscape becoming a place where normal logic is difficult to maintain.
It makes the list because of its combination of rural isolation, surreal horror and psychological uncertainty. Like It Ends, it takes the idea of being somewhere remote and asks what happens when the environment stops behaving like a normal physical location. It is rougher and stranger than many mainstream thrillers, but that is precisely part of its appeal.
19. The Platform (2019)
The Platform moves the liminal trap into a vertical facility where prisoners occupy different levels and must contend with an elaborate system that controls access to food and resources. As the protagonist tries to understand the structure, the film becomes a larger exploration of human behaviour inside an apparently impossible system.
It is less directly similar to It Ends than Dead End or The Incident, but the thematic connection is strong. Both films put ordinary people inside an environment with rigid rules they did not create and force them to decide how they will behave when escape seems impossible. The Platform is also much more openly social in its ideas, whereas It Ends focuses more closely on isolation, adulthood and existential uncertainty.
Next: Where Was IT ENDS Filmed?
For viewers coming away from It Ends, the closest matches are probably Dead End, The Incident, Southbound, Vivarium, In the Tall Grass, The Endless and Coherence. They each capture a different part of what makes the 2026 film unusual: impossible journeys, looping realities, confined groups, liminal environments or the creeping realisation that there may not be a sensible explanation waiting at the end.
The rest of the list broadens that experience into more experimental and psychological territory, so there is plenty here even if you have already worked your way through the obvious road-trip nightmares.
Fan reactions to It Ends are likely to vary precisely because its appeal depends heavily on how much patience a viewer has for ambiguity. Some audiences will enjoy the slow psychological pressure, surreal rules and deliberately confined setting, while others may find the endless-road concept frustrating if they want every mystery neatly explained.
That divide is part of what makes films like this interesting: one viewer sees a clever metaphor for feeling stuck after graduation, another sees four people who desperately need to turn the car around and ask better questions.
With It Ends now moving into its wider theatrical release, the bigger question is whether its particular brand of liminal horror will leave viewers wanting more films about impossible roads, strange loops and realities that have apparently forgotten how reality is supposed to work.
Which of these 19 films have you already watched, and which one would you put at the top of the list for someone who has just finished It Ends? Share your pick, because there is clearly no shortage of cinematic roads that should probably never be travelled after dark.