Written by: Christy Hall
Starring: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, Brandon Sklenar
Rating: [3/5]
When women find themselves in a relationship exhibiting domestic abuse, they often get asked why they continue to stay in it. Surely, one would not continue to be in a situation where they could experience abuse by someone claiming to love them but their actions display the opposite. Plenty of psychology can provide a cogent explanation to it all, but It Ends with Us explores the perspective of a survivor and how they can be lulled into staying in a harmful circumstance and how it cycles through generations.
In her hometown again attending her father’s funeral, Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) meets a charming neurosurgeon named Ryle (Justin Baldoni) who has an interest in her. As they begin to date they encounter a magical spark between them that continues to burn bright until an incident where Ryle allegedly accidentally slaps her begins to form cracks on the truth of their dynamic.
Stories focusing on domestic abuse have a tightrope they need to walk in having a general sensitivity to displaying scenes that may trigger emotions for audience members but also seek to convey the power the survivor has to walk away from this situation. Despite everything else, It Ends with Us does this very well in how it displays the slow realization of how abuse can materialize in a situation and how it, at times, takes other individuals to break the glass and display the truth. This exhibits the film’s success but it certainly has its faults.
Now, plenty surrounds this film on the outside with the very loud and public arguments and lawsuits between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni that contain disputes outside the scope of the review. I mostly bring this up because evidently a major difference of opinion regarding how the story should be structured arose during the production of this film that caused plenty of strife. To the film’s credit, you could not feel it when it came to the final product. For the most part, this dynamic between Ryle and Lily remains one where you can buy this story and journey between the pair and the downward spiral. A credit to Baldoni and Lively for despite everything else coming out that will continue to be parsed through as we learn more but that should not deter what they created here.
Where the film falters a bit appears in everything involving Atlas (Brandon Sklenar). Such a dull character and one that represents a significant figure in the story especially in the way he relates to Lily’s past and evidently key to her future freedom. Pretty much every scene Lily shares with this character brings the film down exponentially partly because of Brandon Sklenar’s performance but also because it presents such a tired trope. Mixing that with the general lack of charisma of the actor tasked with the role and it makes large swaths of this film quite unwatchable.
Additionally, some of the decisions made in this film and where it goes, particularly, in its conclusion really just makes you question the source material and explains exactly why Colleen Hoover receives the criticism she does with this story. A real head-scratcher that in some ways invalidates some of what gets displayed earlier in the film. Obviously, I cannot go into too much detail for spoiler reasons but this story wants to live in some gray areas regarding its abusive character that make no thematic sense to what we see before. Truly confounding stuff and typically one does not want their film to end that way.
Despite some disappointing elements of this film, one cannot discredit what sits at the heart of It Ends with Us as it seeks to display how abuse works in cycles that continue until someone forcibly stops it in addition to how one can slip into an abusive situation. Despite what happened outside the film, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni do a great job at developing the chemistry between these two characters and how it can descend the way it does here. In the end, I remain positive on this film as it navigates such tricky ground and certainly has its heart in the right place in trying to show survivors that it’s okay to leave these abusive relationships.
Films with Josh 
