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Watching\u00a0Benson and Moorhead’s\u00a0The Endless<\/em> for New Scientist,\u00a021 July 2018<\/a><\/p>\n SINCE they escaped a UFO death cult, nothing much has gone right for Justin and his younger brother Aaron. They clean apartments for a living, subsist on junk food and have rotten luck with women. The arrival of a mysterious videotape convinces them that they should revisit the cult for the sake of \u201cclosure\u201d, though it\u2019s obvious that Justin is only going for Aaron\u2019s sake, and what Aaron actually wants most out of this is some decent salad.<\/p>\n But when Justin attempts to jog around the settlement he gets caught in time (although he doesn\u2019t know it at first). Other things are amiss, too, like the third moon. And the rope into nowhere. And an evening heat blur that turns the whole valley into shimmering mirrors.<\/p>\n It transpires that the friendly, gentle people our heroes ran from a decade ago are living in the presence of an unidentified \u201csomething\u201d. It is invisible, but it isn\u2019t hiding. Indeed, it is trying to communicate by showing them, through old photographs and videotapes, what it sees.<\/p>\n This low-budget Lovecraftian thriller explores territory we more usually associate with the heavyweights of the 1970s avant-garde \u2013 with the tangled story arcs of Alain Robbe-Grillet, and the cunningly withheld narrative revelations of Andrei Tarkovsky\u2019s groundbreaking film\u00a0Solaris<\/i>. In fact, I\u2019ll stick my neck out here:\u00a0The Endless<\/i>\u00a0is very nearly this decade\u2019s\u00a0Solaris<\/i>.<\/p>\n But while the intelligent planet in that film was innocent, even as its little \u201cgifts\u201d sent the scientists studying it clear off their heads, the entity presiding over\u00a0The Endless<\/i>\u00a0is more overtly malign: like the wanton boy in\u00a0King Lear<\/i>\u00a0killing flies for sport, perhaps.<\/p>\n It is trapping people in time, affording them just enough free will to recognise their plight, but not quite enough to escape it.<\/p>\n But then, isn\u2019t that just like life? We nearly all live out days that by most objective measures are more or less the same as each other.<\/p>\n Justin and Aaron\u2019s cleaning job was certainly a trap of this sort. And are they any worse off now? It is, after all, a very laid-back, well-behaved sort of death cult, up there in the hills behind San Diego. Its spokesman Hal talks a lot, but he\u2019s not in any real sense a leader. The group seems happy, and the beer they make and sell is top notch. All is as Aaron remembers from his childhood: a lot of nice people preparing a lot of good food.<\/p>\n Maybe Justin\u2019s the one with the problem, that he cannot see the charm in living a looped existence here. Knowing they are trapped and being looked at, this \u201ccult\u201d at least has the graciousness to imagine that they are also being looked after. And who\u2019s to say their metaphysical jailer has not handed them a chance \u2013 an endless series of chances, apparently \u2013 to become the best people they can be?<\/p>\n The directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead also play the brothers Justin and Aaron. (Benson is, wonderfully, a dead ringer for Richard Dreyfuss.) And they have made\u00a0The Endless<\/i>\u00a0dovetail neatly with their first micro-budget feature\u00a0Resolution<\/i>\u00a0(2012). This kind of self-reflexive game-playing can get old extremely quickly, and a rather clunky emotional working-out between the brothers at the climax of the movie should serve as an amber light. Any further with this and self-indulgence will swallow them whole.<\/p>\n My guess, though, is that these two know what they are doing. In\u00a0Spring<\/i>\u00a0(2014) they managed to turn the love affair between an American soldier and a vampiric octopus into one of the most funny, touching and ultimately profound screen love affairs since\u00a0Breakfast at Tiffany\u2019s<\/i>.<\/p>\n Benson (who writes) and Moorhead (who wields the cameras) take the hokiest ideas and discover in them rich seams of human experience. They\u2019re not ironic. They\u2019re not distant. They\u2019re not portentous. And if they can only hold their nerve they will improve the science fiction genre immeasurably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Watching\u00a0Benson and Moorhead’s\u00a0The Endless for New Scientist,\u00a021 July 2018 SINCE they escaped a UFO death cult, nothing much has gone right for Justin and his younger brother Aaron. They clean apartments for a living, subsist on junk food and have … Continue reading