It Ends Leaving You Feeling Like Something Is Missing

Starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate, Brandon Skelnar. Directed by Justin Baldoni. Sony Pictures (2024)

🪩🪩🪩 / 5

It Ends With Us is a timely film with a poignant message.

Finding a balance between a story about abuse mixed with romance was never going to be easy but Baldoni's direction takes you through sequences, scenery and songs that ensures it doesn't border on the tacky.

If you are expecting shocking scenes of violence akin to other films that have featured or glossed over this topic, that is not the case here. But what it does show will still leave you uncomfortable and, for some, triggered.

Blake Lively's Lily Bloom is enchanting (as is pretty much every character Blake plays) but Jenny Slate's Alyssa was the real stand out of the film. Witty, delightful and with an iconic line that cemented her stance as an iconic best friend movie character.

What this film does well is to convey how a woman might be replacing reality with fantasy and delusion when in an abusive situation, no matter how stubborn or strong she may seem.

There is a careful mix of wit and the realities of abuse. However, there is just something missing where while you feel for characters' and their (sometimes) shocking plights it just left emotions building but never fully evoked. Maybe it just was too neat in what is a very messy and heartbreaking conversation. Maybe it was predictability of the storyline from the first meeting between Ryle and Lily or maybe it was how viewers were swiftly taken from present day to flashback sequences.

Fans of Colleen Hoover's book and work will love the adaptation and while this comes across as a film with the female gaze, it's one that everyone can learn from and should discuss.

It Ends With Us is in cinemas now.