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THE ENDLESS (2018)

The Endless poster

CAST
JUSTIN BENSON
AARON MOORHEAD
SHANE BRADY
PETER CILELLA
VINNY CURRAN
TATE ELLINGTON
CALLIE HERNANDEZ
JAMES JORDAN
EMILY MONTAGUE
KIRA POWELL
LAW TEMPLE

WRITTEN BY
JUSTIN BENSON

PRODUCED BY
JUSTIN BENSON
THOMAS R. BURKE
DAVID LAWSN JR.
AARON MOORHEAD
LEAL NAIM

DIRECTED BY
JUSTIN BENSON
AARON MOORHEAD

GENRE
MYSTERY
SCI-FI
THRILLER

RATED
AUS:M
UK:15
USA:M

RUNNING TIME
100 MIN

 

 

The Endless image

The constraints of time take centre stage in The Endless, a genre bending feature of high imagination and deep thought from the ever impressive filmmaker duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.

From Steven Spielberg to Gareth Edwards, the best genre filmmakers of blockbuster fare all had their start on independent productions. It is where their talent and innovation was first presented to the world, the stepping stones that would lead to bigger and perhaps even better things.

Filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are the next to make that big step. With their third feature film The Endless, they once again prove their talent for not only storytelling of grand design and potent thought, but the ability to do so in an innovative manner, in which low-budget production costs are impressively used to create larger than life visuals that would make major studios blush with envy. Their type of filmmaking is the remedy needed during these franchise infested times, an example of craft and imagination blending together in perfect, spellbinding unison.

The Endless stars Moorhead and Benson (who also write and produce) as Aaron and Justin Smith, brothers who several years prior escaped a UFO death cult. After receiving a mysterious package from the cult compound they once abandoned, the brothers decide to return for a sense of “closure”. Instead they find themselves in an increasingly mysterious set of circumstances, that gets weirder as they dig deeper into this place they once called home.

As Aaron and Justin get sucked further into this world, so too does the viewer find themselves absorbed in this increasingly captivating story about the entrapment of time and the love of family. As actors, Moorhead and Benson deliver sympathetic performances as brothers trying to find closure on a dramatic period in their life, and certainty on an increasingly fractured relationship. Yet it is as filmmakers where the duo truly shine, with The Endless a potent example of how Benson and Moorhead are able to blend horror, sci-fi and mystery to seamless effect. The pair then fasten their tapestry to a dramatic anchor that brings a deep level of humanity to an increasingly wacky world where time and space do not play by the rules.   

The end result is a movie that wows the mind and touches the heart with equal, compounding measure. For those who believe that genre films are exploitative, mindless endeavours, The Endless is just the response to such closed-minded thinking, a mind-expanding trip with brain, soul and just the right amount of crazy. Exactly the antidote to todays oversaturated, overwrought times.

 

****

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