I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Meeting the parents is truly mortifying in a film of escalating unease from the ever-inventive mind of writer/director Charlie Kaufman. Adapting Iain Reid's novel, Kaufman introduces us to a newly acquainted couple (played by Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons) already showing signs of strain, who brave snowstorms on a long car journey to visit his folks (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) in rural Oklahoma. Superbly acted by all, particularly a disorientated Buckley and a deranged Collette, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is a cornucopia of Lynchian eccentricity and discomfort, grotesque spectacle and unexplained events - all rooted in recognisably awful interactions, fear and disaffection. Assuming a playful approach to identity and exposition, Kaufman toys with the viewer by inserting horror genre tropes that threaten to take us into nightmarish territory, only for black humour to come to the rescue. As it increasingly strays from the logical track, the film can begin to wear heavy over its two-hour-plus running time. But there's song, dance and an animated pig to look forward to, and, in the hands of Kaufman, it's all wonderfully, wickedly strange.