Is 'It Ends' the Next Indie Gen Z Hit After 'Backrooms' and 'Obsession'?

The two biggest hits of the season — at least until The Odyssey came along — were Gen Z creations, Backrooms and Obsession. I love that for them. The marketplace needs fresh ideas and new perspectives, and the box office agrees. Granted, they’re not my favorite movies. Obsession was a solid B+, derivative but fun, while Backrooms, I thought, was fascinating but kind of boring.

I do find the Gen Z fascination with Backrooms interesting, though, if only because a movie about an endless series of rooms and hallways somehow captivated a generation purportedly incapable of sitting still for anything longer than a TikTok. The next supposed entry into the Gen Z horror canon doubles down on that: the ironically titled It Ends, about a foursome who head out for a food run and find themselves trapped on a road that doesn’t.

The reviews out of 2025’s SXSW were apparently great — it’s sitting at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — and it gained something of a following after a limited release on Letterboxd last December. Neon puts it in theaters on August 21st. The trailer doesn’t do a lot for me — among the Gen Z horror cadre, I prefer the Philippou brothers — but I do love the generation’s hankering for more indie films, so I hope we’ve got another Obsession-sized hit on our hands.