I'm Thinking of Ending Things

A young woman contemplates ending her approximately seven-week relationship with her boyfriend Jake while on a trip to meet his parents at their farm. During the drive, Jake attempts to recite a poem he read when he was younger, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", and asks the young woman to recite an original poem of hers to pass time. After she recites a morbid poem about coming home,[lower-alpha 1] they arrive at the farmhouse owned by Jake's parents. Jake takes her to the barn, where he recounts a story about how the farm's pigs died after being eaten alive by maggots. Throughout the film, the main narrative is intercut with footage of an elderly janitor working at a high school, including scenes in which he sees students rehearsing Oklahoma! and watches a romantic comedy film.

Upon entering the farmhouse, the young woman notices scratches on the door leading to the basement. At dinner with Jake's parents, she (whose occupation and name change throughout) shows them photographs of her landscape paintings and explains how she met Jake at a trivia night in a bar, with narrative inconsistencies. Later, she notices a picture of Jake as a child, but becomes confused after initially recognizing the child as herself. She receives a call from a friend with a female name, and a mysterious male voice explains that there is "one question to answer". Over the course of the night, Jake's parents transform into their younger and older selves, though nobody on screen comments on this. When the young woman takes a nightgown down to the basement to wash, she discovers several janitor uniforms in the washing machine and finds posters for Ralph Albert Blakelock exhibitions that have images of paintings seemingly identical to her own. She also receives another call from the same mysterious voice.

On the drive home, Jake refers to several events that evening which the young woman does not remember and then claims she drank a lot of wine. Word association leads to an extended critical discussion of John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence.[lower-alpha 2] The couple stops at Tulsey Town, a drive-through ice cream stand, whose employees are students at the janitor's school. When the young woman is leaving, an employee with a rash says they are scared for her.

Jake and the young woman cannot finish their sugary desserts, so he stops at his high school to throw the ice-cream cups away. After a heated argument in the parking lot about the lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside", they share a kiss. Suddenly, Jake has a flashback of the janitor watching them from inside the school and decides to confront him, leaving the young woman alone in the car. Eventually, she decides to look for Jake inside the school. She meets the janitor and asks him where Jake is, but she cannot remember what Jake looks like. She tells the janitor that nothing happened between Jake and her on the night they met, instead claiming Jake made her uncomfortable by staring at her.

The young woman discovers Jake at the end of a hall. They watch as people dressed like themselves and the janitor engage in a ballet,[lower-alpha 3] which ends when the janitor's dancer kills Jake's dancer with a knife.

Having finished his shift, the janitor enters his car, but does not start the motor. He experiences hallucinations of Jake's parents arguing and animated Tulsey Town commercials. The janitor then takes off his clothes and walks back inside the school, led by the hallucination of a maggot-infested pig who tells him that "someone has to be the pig infested with maggots", that "everything is the same, when you look close enough", and that he should get dressed.

On an auditorium stage, an old Jake receives a Nobel Prize[lower-alpha 4] and sings "Lonely Room"[3] from Oklahoma! to an audience of people from his life, all of them in theatrical old-age makeup, who give him a standing ovation when he is done.

In the final shot, the couple's car is not visible in the school parking lot, while the janitor's truck is covered in snow.[4] Towards the end of the credits, scraping sounds and the engine of an approaching vehicle are heard.

It was announced in January 2018 that Charlie Kaufman was adapting Iain Reid's novel I'm Thinking of Ending Things for Netflix, as well as directing.[8] In December, Brie Larson and Jesse Plemons were cast in the film.[9][10] In March 2019, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette and David Thewlis joined the cast, with Buckley replacing Larson.[11]

Principal photography began on March 13, 2019, in Fishkill, New York,[12] and was completed on April 29. As of November 7, the film was in post-production.[13][14]

I'm Thinking of Ending Things was released in select theaters on August 28, 2020,[15] and on Netflix on September 4.[16]

• I'm Thinking of Ending Things on Netflix
• I'm Thinking of Ending Things at IMDb