Long time, no see, huh? I’m at a bit of a crossroads with this blog- wanting to to my writing a list more seriously but fearing no one will read it if I do, so it leads to a serious case of writer’s block and then, no updates.
But, I just saw i’m thinking of ending things (2020), and I have some OPINIONS.
Cards on the table, I read the book a few years ago, at the cautious recommendation of one of my coworkers at the bookstore we worked at together (giving me a crazy foray of knowledge I will literally never be able to use again). That was, roughly, in 2018, and I haven’t stopped thinking about the book written by Iain Reed since. And not always in good ways. It’s an enigma for me.
It’s an incredibly strong thriller. Introspective and terrifying, claustrophobic and distant. It’s being trapped in a locked car in the middle of an empty field. It’s an amnesiac trying to remember their favorite movie. The ending left me spinning, confused and desperate for understanding, but also content with what I was given.
Unfortunately, this movie gave me none of that.
Through the first half of the film, I felt the lead up with the book as I remembered it; the phone calls from nowhere, the protagonist’s lukewarm reception to her boyfriend, his upside-down family. There were moments of foreshadowing that tricked me into being excited for the grand reveal. A reveal that… never came. And not in the way that the book left me pining for closure, never came in the sense that, once the young couple reached the climactic location, the plot just… shifted.
What began as a book about obsession and predetermination became a movie about hopelessness and the tortured genius. Both are unsettling, but while the former felt truly like a psychological horror, the latter came across, honestly, like it was trying too hard to be artsy to bother with the original source text.
To give credit where credit is due, it was incredibly fascinating from a cinematic viewpoint; the musical-focused scenes were enchanting and further blurred the already unclear lines between reality and psychosis. The cinematography was beautiful, and the actors did a phenomenal with what was definitely NOT an easy script to translate.
But by the time credits rolled, it was no longer the book I had been turning over in my head for the past two years. I had been counting down the days to see this ben translated on screen, thrilled at the prospect of seeing the climax visually rather than how my minds eye interpreted words on a page. And now, that’s a hope to be shelved. Which, in some ways, sort of follows the trend of i’m thinking of ending things.
Unofficial Rating
i’m thinking of Ending things
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