Soon Jake and Lucy escape back to their car, where lengthy discussions of filmmaker John Cassavetes’s 1974 thriller A Woman Under the Influence, David Foster Wallace's legacy, and the nature of personality soon follow. “You’re being willfully obtuse,” Lucy says to Jake (and not to Kaufman, I think). Things truly ratchet up when Lucy and Jake reach the farmhouse, but even that is fleeting. By contrast, the first half hour of I'm Thinking of Ending Things takes place entirely in a dimly lit car with Lucy and Jake in close up. Netflix more regularly excels at lean, fast-moving films across genres, from Extractionto To All the Boys I Loved Before to Dolemite Is My Name. Yes, the streaming service has other examples of truly indulgent filmmaking ( Roma) and meandering, methodically paced stories ( The Irishman), but those films are the exceptions. This project was envisioned for Netflix from the start, so it's surprising how un-Netflix the final version feels. Advertisementįurther Reading AMC tries to reopen again, with 15-cent tickets as COVID-19 risk incentive But as the blizzard keeps worsening and Jake slowly loses his enthusiasm for heading back promptly, Lucy starts exploring what she believed to be a farmhouse but what increasingly seems to be some fixed place with very fluid definitions of time and reality.

Jake warned her the old farmhouse didn't have much to it, particularly its nondescript bedrooms upstairs and the unfinished basement beneath. And pictures of baby Jake on the wall intermittently look a whole awful lot like baby Lucy. She keeps getting missed calls from 'Lucy.' The family dog won't stop shaking off non-existent water. And by the time dessert has been brought out, Lucy senses something's up. Harmless, based on first impressions, but totally strange. Jake's parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) almost immediately come across as strange. The blizzard quickly becomes the least of Lucy's concerns, though. Lucy needs to get home tonight to make it to work in the morning, and Jake initially commits to that tight timeline, too. And evidently family matters to him, because he'll navigate what looks like a developing blizzard for this dinner. it’s a uniquely human fantasy that things will get better, born, perhaps, out of a uniquely human understanding that they will not.”īut still, Lucy sees Jake as fine. When they finally arrive? 'Everything has to die, that’s the truth. 'I should be excited, looking towards the first of many-but I'm not,' Lucy narrates early in their claustrophobic car ride. The two haven't been dating very long, but Lucy's inner thoughts already suggest they won't be dating much longer. Quantum physics student Lucy (Jessie Buckley) and her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) set out for rural Oklahoma farmland so she can meet his parents for the first time. while I'm Thinking of Ending Things was always going to be somewhat bizarre, the most perplexing thing about it may be calling it a 'Netflix film.' Prepare to hit play on the platform's oddest release to date. The fact that Kaufman finally opted to partner with a major streaming service means I'm Thinking of Ending Things theoretically has the potential to help the filmmaker find his biggest audience, too. Further Reading The Ars Technica science fiction bucket list-42 movies every geek must see

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