One of the biggest things I’ve noticed while reading people’s observations on the film as a whole is that it’s going over everybody’s head. I can’t even tell you how many comments I’ve read that didn’t understand the film at all. To them, it’s just this massive self-indulgent mess of incoherent dialogue, all of which amounts to nothing. Far too many people think they wasted their time watching the movie. So, my goal during this review is to maybe get you in a different mindset before you watch it. That way, you’ll have the best possible chance to enjoy it, but I fear that this is one of those instances where you’ll either understand it…or you won’t. I’m not going to hand you the meaning of the film on a silver platter. If I did that, that would be stealing the experience from somebody else.

Here’s my first suggestion: Keep an open mind and pay attention to everything. I’m not kidding when I say the entirety of this movie, whether you believe it or not, is important. The film, and Charlie Kaufman in general, is incredibly high-brow, so there’s a lot of scholarly references made in the film that won’t mean that much to you. However, if you sat and researched those references, you would be able to appreciate the whole movie a little more. You don’t NEED to understand absolutely everything, though. Just pay attention to the little things, like the main girl’s name. Every time they call her something, pay attention because her name keeps changing. That’s not much of a spoiler because its nothing they even focus on that much. If you miss it, you miss it, Kaufman doesn’t care if you catch these little things or not. But it is important, so keep an eye on that. Also keep an eye on the color changes, primarily in what the girl is wearing. As she discovers more about her world and her environment, her physical appearance keeps transforming. When you first see her, she’s very, very red. Red hair, red hat, red coat, red shirt. When she gets to the parents, there’s a lot of blue and yellow hues to what she’s wearing, which matches the odd nature of the house. In the third act, she apparently has a wardrobe change and has a blue hat, blue coat, blue shirt, and her once bright red hair is now very, very dark. This is also symbolizing the changes her character is going through.

Here’s my second suggestion: Watch this movie like it’s either an episode of The Twilight Zone or is all a dream. Charlie Kaufman often focuses on how the mind works. Most prominently seen in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, that film does a great job at showing you the weird fragments of how a mind pieces together a puzzle. I’m Thinking of Ending Things sometimes follows the same procedure, just in a much more contained and less-explosive manner. Don’t watch this as a normal linear story. Those that do will undoubtedly be lost. Instead, I implore you to watch it like it’s a puzzle that needs to be solved. Be your own Sherlock Holmes and try to solve the puzzle. If you don’t get it on the first go, watch it all over again and try again. It might take a few viewings before it clicks, but that’s okay. Don’t despair or give up, because it’s a very smart movie. Once you figure it out, your mind will be blown.

If I had anything negative to say about it at all is that I didn’t figure all the little things out. Why are there scratches at the door? Why is everyone apologizing for the smell? What’s up with the Oklahoma musical? What’s up with the dancers? There’s all these little things that happen in the movie that definitely mean something, even if metaphorically, that I couldn’t quite figure out on the first viewing, and because it’s so utterly high-brow, there’s all these references to people, books, and things that a normal audience member will never be able to understand without hours of research at minimum. So, a part of me wants to say that the film is unnecessarily self-indulgent at times, but it’s not an incoherent mess. I understand the overall point, and if you can do that, the rest won’t matter as much.

Let’s take a look at my final score. From an unbiased, technical level, I think this is a very smart movie that does a very good job at keeping things original and unpredictable. It’s slightly self-indulgent at times, but to be fair, what isn’t? My unbiased score is 90%. My personal, biased score is slightly lower at 86%, which is still pretty good, but my experience as a whole went from bored, to confused, to uncomfortable before it got interested in the film. I much prefer the last two acts over the first. Averaging out the two scores together, we come to the final rating of 88%. 88 out of 100 possible stars, granting the movie with a letter grade of B+. Not too shabby at all.