I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Audience sentiment begins low during the famously slow opening car ride, climbs sharply at the farmhouse as Collette and Thewlis deliver unsettling, shape-shifting performances, then plateaus through the intellectually dense middle stretch before surging to its peak at the dream ballet and Oklahoma finale. The film is polarizing throughout, with a persistent gap between viewers who find its surreal puzzle rewarding and those who find it exhausting and withholding, producing a jagged arc that never fully recovers its early farmhouse momentum until the very end. The overall reception reflects a film that earns genuine admiration for its ambition and its final emotional gut-punch while frustrating a significant portion of its audience with its deliberate opacity and punishing runtime.