This Horror Thriller Cost Just $80K to Make and It’s Already Winning Over Audiences

Breaking into the horror genre as a first-time filmmaker usually means navigating a crowded marketplace stacked with recognizable names and studio backing. For Alexander Ullom, the path looked nothing like that traditional route, and somehow it’s turned out to be exactly the right one.

Ullom, a 28-year-old Florida State University film school graduate, wrote and directed ‘It Ends,’ a horror-thriller that spent nearly a year stuck in what he calls “distribution purgatory” after premiering at SXSW in March 2025. Despite that rocky path to release, the film has now hit theaters and is earning some of the strongest reviews of any horror release this year, currently sitting at a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 24 reviews.

That success comes from a film made on a shoestring budget that ballooned considerably during production. What started as a $30,000 project ended up costing between $80,000 and $90,000 after Ullom reshot the film three separate times, with total costs, including post-production, eventually reaching around $150,000.

The film follows three recent college graduates, James, Day, and Fisher, who reunite with their military friend Tyler for a late-night drive in his Jeep Cherokee in search of food. Instead of a quick food run, the group finds themselves trapped on a never-ending two-lane highway, surrounded by cosmic, otherworldly horrors they can’t fully comprehend.

Confined to that single vehicle for what becomes an increasingly existential ordeal, the characters must decide whether to accept their strange new reality or fight desperately to escape it. That premise has drawn comparisons to other confined-space thrillers, though critics have largely praised Ullom’s ability to make the concept feel genuinely fresh rather than derivative.

Speaking with Variety, Ullom placed his film within a broader trend reshaping how young filmmakers are breaking into the genre. “It’s weird because ‘It Ends’ wasn’t made for a marketplace, whereas with ‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms,’ Curry [Barker] and Kane [Parsons] honed their craft for years on YouTube,” he explained. “The model that has worked for a long time doesn’t work anymore and there are certain sensibilities and cultural tastes that you can’t manufacture without letting the kids play. It would be really fucking awesome if this trend continues.”

That comparison places Ullom alongside a wave of young horror filmmakers who’ve built audiences and reputations well outside traditional Hollywood pipelines. Where Barker and Parsons cultivated their craft through years of YouTube content before making the jump to feature filmmaking, Ullom’s path ran through film school and festival circuits instead, offering a slightly different but equally unconventional route into the genre.

Ullom isn’t slowing down to enjoy the acclaim either. By his own admission, he arrived for press interviews about ‘It Ends’ looking like “a fuckin’ mess,” having just wrapped principal photography on his sophomore feature, “4 x 4: The Event,” two days earlier before flying directly to Los Angeles.

He’s described that follow-up project as “balls-to-the-wall gore and violence,” a considerable tonal shift from the slower-burn, existential dread that defines ‘It Ends.’ That kind of rapid turnaround between projects suggests Ullom is eager to capitalize on his current momentum rather than let it cool while waiting for a longer development cycle.

For a genre that has increasingly rewarded scrappy, self-made success stories, ‘It Ends’ adds another compelling case study to that growing list. Whether Ullom’s prediction about Hollywood’s old models breaking down proves accurate remains to be seen, but his own journey, from a $30,000 budget to critical acclaim on the festival circuit and eventually theatrical release, offers a genuinely inspiring blueprint for aspiring filmmakers working entirely outside the traditional system.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!