The End­less – first look review

“I don’t know why we haven’t been able to make a liv­ing, or make friends – meet girls.” Dur­ing a reg­u­lar ​‘depro­gram­ming’ ses­sion with a coun­sel­lor, Justin is won­der­ing how, 10 years after he man­aged to extract him­self and his younger broth­er Aaron from a rur­al ​“UFO death cult”, they both seem to be caught in an end­less cycle of low-pay drudgery, bad food and sex­less­ness in the city – as cas­trat­ed metaphor­i­cal­ly as Justin claims their fel­low res­i­dents back at Camp Arca­dia had been literally.

Drawn back to the cult by a mys­te­ri­ous video­tape mes­sage (in a redun­dant for­mat) which appears on their doorstep at the begin­ning of The End­less, Aaron hopes to find there what has been miss­ing from his life ever since, while the more cyn­i­cal and con­trol­ling Justin tags along, deter­mined not to let his broth­er get trapped all over again.

The End­less calls to mind the likes of Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene, The Sacra­ment and The Invi­ta­tion, drama­tis­ing the flu­id fron­tier that sep­a­rates America’s worlds of faith and sec­u­lar­ism. In a sense, the film is just that – a lit­er­al cult movie in which one person’s belief sys­tem is another’s repres­sive régime of obe­di­ence. But once Justin and Aaron have reached the back­woods area where Camp Arca­dia is locat­ed, it quick­ly becomes appar­ent that they have entered an irra­tional, abstract space, whether it be a desert Shangri-la whose inhab­i­tants do not appear to age. Or is it a topo­graph­i­cal Rubik’s cube where the physics of time and space oper­ate in unusu­al ways? Or per­haps a giant Marien­bad-esque petri dish where human sub­jects and their sto­ries of pet­ty strug­gle are placed under a mon­strous micro­scope for repeat observation?

Here, sur­round­ed by a one-time ​‘fam­i­ly’ who would be only too hap­py to accept the broth­ers per­ma­nent­ly back into the fold, Aaron and Justin must face some home truths, and decide what they real­ly want out of life and each oth­er. The fact that Justin and Aaron are played respec­tive­ly by writer/​director/​producer Justin Ben­son and his co-direc­tor/­co-pro­duc­er/­DoP Aaron Moor­head is a clear sign of reflex­iv­i­ty to come. Indeed, The End­less is a meta-cin­e­mat­ic reflec­tion on the repeata­bil­i­ty and rewatch­a­bil­i­ty of movie nar­ra­tives, deliv­er­ing its mes­sage in mul­ti­ple for­mats of film and video.

Not only this, but its sto­ries of loop­ing eter­ni­ty warp and fold them­selves back in on Ben­son and Moorhead’s own past fil­mog­ra­phy – both Spring and espe­cial­ly their fea­ture debut Res­o­lu­tion, whose ideas and even char­ac­ters are recy­cled here. It would be a mis­take to dis­miss all these ref­er­ences to the film­mak­ers’ past works mere­ly as sophis­ti­cat­ed in-jokes – in fact they con­tex­tu­alise Justin and Aaron’s cri­sis as just one of many human strug­gles to find iden­ti­ty, mean­ing and truth in a life which can seem at best shit­ty and at worst a pup­pet show manip­u­lat­ed by invis­i­ble powers.

The broth­ers and their new hosts, after all, are Piran­del­lo-esque char­ac­ters in search of an author, and ulti­mate­ly sub­ject to the inscrutable judge­ment of an unseen view­er who, just like any cin­ema­go­er, is beyond the com­pre­hen­sion or con­trol of the on-screen play­ers – or indeed of the filmmakers.

Like all of Ben­son and Moorhead’s films, The End­less ven­tures to a place where genre’s bound­aries are at their most blurred, and where human dra­mas play out on eerie super­nat­ur­al stages that ampli­fy the oth­er­wise every­day stakes involved in evolv­ing from one’s own behav­iour­al pat­terns and con­fronting one’s own mortality.

It is beau­ti­ful­ly shot and edit­ed, with con­stant, elab­o­rate match cuts serv­ing to expose the loos­en­ing of spa­tiotem­po­ral bound­aries, and sin­u­ous hand­held long takes slow­ly reveal­ing the impos­si­ble unfold­ing all around. The visu­al effects are sub­tly unset­tling in the way that they con­jure an ever-present, pal­pa­ble ​‘it’ whose nature remains unknown. Sound too is used to con­jure a para­dox­i­cal loca­tion where every­thing oper­ates like a bro­ken record jump­ing and skip­ping across the same locked groove.

All this is a mas­ter­ful defa­mil­iari­sa­tion of what appears to be the most ordi­nary locale, as far from goth­ic arti­fice as can be imag­ined, but res­o­nant with the metaphors of exis­ten­tial dread. Need­less to say, the film is as thought-pro­vok­ing as it is sur­re­al­ly fun­ny and creep­i­ly bril­liant. For The End­less some­how man­ages to be at once thor­ough­ly orig­i­nal and almost a sequel, revis­it­ing old themes and scenes while mak­ing that revis­i­ta­tion its own cen­tral theme.

Else­where, diehard Benson/​Moorhead fans intrigued by throw­away ref­er­ences in their oth­er films to a char­ac­ter known as ​‘Shit­ty Carl’ will not be dis­ap­point­ed by his return here. Hal (Tate Elling­ton), the most gar­ru­lous of the Arca­di­ans, assures Justin that ​“noth­ing here ends.” Yet with The End­less, Justin and Aaron do final­ly find a res­o­lu­tion of sorts – even if they nev­er quite get the girls.

The End­less pre­mieres at the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val on 21 April, 2017.