Netflix’s ‘End of the Road’ is a tense social thriller that finds strength in family

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If you thought Hollywood had worn out the tyres on unsettling road thrillers, End of the Road proves there’s still gas in the tank.

From director Millicent Shelton, Netflix’s End of the Road begins as an emotionally loaded road trip that takes a hard right turn into terror. Recently widowed Brenda (Queen Latifah), her brother Reggie (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), her teen daughter Kelly (Mychala Lee), and her young son Cam (Shaun Dixon) are driving from Los Angeles to Texas, loaded down with grief and financial trouble. However, Shelton shifts gears into thriller territory almost immediately as the family encounters violent racism in the Southwest. Once they witness a murder and get embroiled with an anonymous drug boss, things get pretty damn terrifying for Brenda and her family.

Shelton’s expertise as a TV and music video director comes through in every moment of End of the Road, with almost every scene equipped with an uncomfortably shallow depth of field and either hyper-saturated or neon-lit in a surreal, uneasy intensity that matches how removed from safety the family are in the desert. The brighter the magentas and oranges get, the more dangerous and messed up things become. And messed up they get, with Brenda, Reggie, Kelly, and Cam facing multiple scenarios where they’re being chased, held captive, or having to fight for their lives against terrifyingly racist, violent people whose hateful words and brutal intentions run unchecked in a seemingly lawless landscape. “It’s a different world out here,” says Reggie, and he’s right. 

Shelton’s use of lighting is highly unsettling.

Credit: Ursula Coyote / Netflix

Road thrillers can be an easily manoeuvred genre to explore broader themes like family, social oppression, and a sense of belonging; take Michael Pearce’s Encounter for example, which uses the genre to explore fatherhood and mental health. And while this film’s narrative may not reinvent the wheel — innocent road trippers see something they shouldn’t, take something they shouldn’t, get a “we know what you did” call, and have to outrun a mysterious killer in an isolated environment — End of the Road has more to say. Shelton makes a social thriller of it, moving the film’s Black protagonists through an unrelenting hellscape of white supremacy when all Brenda wants to do is drive her family to their new home in Houston, Texas, and start fresh.

Shelton balances this ever-present level of threat with classic family road trip markers — a silly pillow fight in a roadside motel, kids being made to having a Real Conversation in the car instead of being on their phones, visiting a roadside Wild West theme park. And it’s within these scenes that Shelton allows her core four actors to explore themes of family, strength, and resilience amid playful banter and solid burns, making space for the film’s protagonists to connect as a family amid all this terror.

Come on, they just wanted to get to Houston.

Credit: Ursula Coyote / Netflix

Queen Latifah brings expertly understated realism and strength to Brenda that makes her alternating moments of panic and power truly genuine, as she tries to maintain a sense of calm control to get through extremely distressing situations alive. (Without spoiling anything, just know the nest of neo-Nazis Brenda drives into do not end up with the upper hand.) Brenda is absolutely exhausted by the film’s final moments, and she should be.

Bridges balances his onscreen sister’s tendency toward responsibility with seizing-the-moment Cool Uncle energy, and together they imbue the siblings with believably oscillating chemistry; in one moment they’re laying down big truths, the next they have each other’s backs. Lee and Dixon bring wit and maturity to their fully realised characters, as kids that have had to grow up sooner than they otherwise may have due to grief, but whose family keeps them in sight of what’s important — and teaches them how to navigate life in the face of unyielding racism. Most of all, the four consistently do anything to keep each other safe, supported, and together through it all.

Ultimately, End of the Road pretty much follows the road movie rulebook, but the space Shelton makes for her talented cast to carve out poignant moments of family strength and togetherness is undeniably moving, and the pervasive sense of unchallenged white supremacy proves a timely villain. Several scenes are more than intense and upsetting, with the director not letting the audience rest for one minute more than her onscreen protagonists.

Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it… It sure is one hell of a ride. Dammit.

End of the Road is now streaming on Netflix.(opens in a new tab)