‘It Ends’ Brings Director Commentary Into Theaters With New TheaterEars Experience

Alexander Ullom’s It Ends adds a synchronized in-theater commentary experience featuring the director and producers Carrie Carusone and Evan Barber.

NEON’s It Ends is giving audiences a different way to experience Alexander Ullom’s feature debut when the film expands nationwide on August 28.

NEON and TheaterEars have announced a Director’s Experience for the existential road horror film, allowing moviegoers to listen to synchronized commentary from writer-director-editor Alexander Ullom and producers Carrie Carusone and Evan Barber while watching the movie in theaters.

Beginning August 28, audiences at participating theaters can access the commentary through the TheaterEars mobile app using their own phone and headphones. The audio plays alongside the theatrical presentation and is designed to remain synchronized with the movie in real time.

The process does not require theaters to install additional equipment. Moviegoers download the TheaterEars app, select It Ends and their showtime, and start the commentary when the film begins. TheaterEars says the experience works with multiple theatrical formats, including RealD and 4DX.

The Director’s Experience is available through the free, ad-supported version of the app during standard showtimes at participating locations, without an additional ticket surcharge.

Traditionally, filmmaker commentary tracks have been associated with physical media and home releases, often arriving well after a movie has completed its theatrical run. TheaterEars’ format instead brings that supplemental experience into the auditorium while the film remains in first-run release.

“Commentary tracks have always arrived after the fact, months later, on a disc or a stream, to an audience that has already moved on,” TheaterEars founder and CEO Dan Mangru said. “Putting his voice in that room, while the film is still on screens, is exactly the thing we built this for.”

The format has an interesting connection to the construction of It Ends itself.

The film follows four recent graduates whose late-night trip for food takes them onto a two-lane road that appears to stretch endlessly ahead of them. With something waiting beyond the road and stopping becoming increasingly dangerous, the group finds itself trapped inside a journey with no apparent destination.

Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth and Mitchell Cole lead the cast.

Much of It Ends takes place inside a Jeep Cherokee, with Ullom building tension through the conversations, silences and changing relationships between its four central characters rather than relying exclusively on conventional horror set pieces. Ullom has described the approach as “hangout horror.”

That contained construction also gives the commentary track plenty of filmmaking territory to explore, particularly when it comes to staging, editing and maintaining visual momentum within the restricted environment of a single vehicle.

“I made a movie that takes place almost entirely inside a car, so I spent a year thinking about what four people say to each other and what they don’t,” Ullom said. “Getting to sit next to an audience while they watch it and tell them what we were actually doing — in a theater, while it’s still in theaters — is not something I thought was possible when we were shooting this in twenty days.”

It Ends was filmed over 20 shooting days and emerged from Ullom’s independent filmmaking background. He met Carusone and Barber while studying at Florida State University’s College of Motion Picture Arts, with both later joining him as producers on the feature.

The project eventually premiered in competition at SXSW 2025 before being acquired by NEON for theatrical distribution.

The Director’s Experience also represents the latest expansion of TheaterEars’ synchronized-audio platform. The service was originally developed to provide Spanish-language dubbing for moviegoers during standard theatrical screenings and has since expanded to include audio description for blind and low-vision audiences alongside its filmmaker-commentary initiative.

For It Ends, that technology provides audiences with the unusual option of experiencing a filmmaker commentary during the movie’s initial theatrical life rather than waiting for its eventual home release.

The experience is probably best suited to viewers returning for another trip down Ullom’s endless road rather than anyone hoping to experience its mysteries completely untouched for the first time. For those who have already seen the film, however, the synchronized track offers an opportunity to revisit the production while hearing directly from the filmmakers responsible for putting its confined nightmare together.

The It Ends Director’s Experience launches through TheaterEars at participating theaters on August 28, coinciding with the film’s nationwide theatrical expansion from NEON.