Starring Justin Benson

All sorts of subterranean modern American anxieties get filtered through this smart and agreeably pulpy exercise. Chief among them: what’s worse? Being in a suicide cult or not being in a suicide cult?

Life in the outside world has been anything but rosy for brothers Aaron and Justin in the 10 years since they escaped their desert-based doomsday community. The mysterious arrival of a beaten-up old videotape draws them back, which is fine for Aaron, eager for a return to the group security he remembers, mandatory castration aside. For the far less enthusiastic Justin, here’s the chance to remind his little bro: “Told ya so.”

Arcadia does indeed appear to be idyllic, mind you, to the extent that nobody in the congenial, craft-beer-brewing commune has apparently aged in a decade. If there’s a leader, he’s played by Tate Ellington (Shameless) as more of a cardigan-wearing young fogey than a Marshall Applewhite. Although he does make it fairly clear that Justin is welcome to the barely legal charms of group member Lizzy (Kira Powell).

Sex with his old crush Anna (Callie Hernandez, La La Land) is also an inducement to awkward and virginal Aaron, but if this all seems “kinda culty” to the determinedly skeptical Justin, it becomes increasingly difficult for the older sibling to explain the freaky supernatural incidents piling up around their visit. Especially after a sit-down with fringe-dweller Shitty Carl (James Jordan, Veronica Mars), who appears to be in two places at once, in the pre- and post-suicide sense. And where did that tape come from, anyway?

In the spirit of the H.P. Lovecraft quote that opens the film, The Endless ultimately goes all-in with its embrace of dark and fearful things, wisely showing about as much of the unshowable as it can get away with, and largely keeping its focus on the grief inflicted on a hard-core rationalist suddenly confronted with the relentlessly irrational. (He might be suffering for all of us right now.)

Starring in their own movie, directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson turn out to be equally slick on either side of the camera (Benson takes the writing credit), and The Endless improves greatly on their 2014 festival hit, Spring, which was too fussy about explaining itself. Here, they have a ball with the film’s screwy internal logic and effective visual design, somehow landing on a breezy tone despite a seriously heavy nucleus of unthinkable dread.

Georgia Straight, April 2018