Hallucinatory ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ worth the trip
Charlie Kaufman turns out one of the strangest films of his career
Writer/director Charlie Kaufman, the brain behind “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Adaptation.” and “Being John Malkovich,” became a Hollywood darling for his willingness to stretch the limits of storytelling.
But while his weird and whimsical style broke the rules and taunted tradition, his screenplays always excavated unexpected nuggets of truth and beauty.
In his directorial efforts, Kaufman has even further expanded the boundaries of cinematic storytelling, creating something like philosophical theater that utilizes the flexibility of cinema to muse on identity, aging, life, death and love. His latest film, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” arriving on Netflix, is one of his most outre efforts yet.
Although Kaufman’s work willfully denies genre and categorization, the unsettling yet mesmeric “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is decidedly his horror film. Based on the 2016 debut novel by Iain Reed, a horror thriller that was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, the film’s atmosphere is suffused with dread and foreboding, punctuated with flourishes of body horror. The camera drifts and lurks in dim, claustrophobic spaces, where the inscrutable, unpredictable characters clatter together, building to an uneasy denouement.
The snowy setting and entanglement with the ideas of isolation, genius, diligence, hallucination and time make “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” a fascinating comparison