The End
Neon | Release Date: December 6, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
16
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 8, 2024
A mixture of domestic drama, apocalyptic fable and old-fashioned (and unironic) Hollywood musical, The End is an audacious and frequently enrapturing experience, with superb performances at its emotional heart. Read full review
91
The Film StageCaleb HammondSep 7, 2024
The End carries that rare sense of a lack of compromise––a fully realized world from a visionary director. It’s exhilarating to simply exist in this world that Oppenheimer and his team (including co-writer Rasmus Heisterberg) craft. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichAug 31, 2024
There’s a thin line between kindness and complicity, and “The End” achieves its sneakily immense power by dancing all over it with an ambivalence that Oppenheimer’s previous work never allowed for. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonDec 5, 2024
The End is about one version of the end of the world, and about how the people who could have prevented it might feel when they get there. But to watch it is to think about yourself, at least if you have a conscience, and to ponder the sort of cognitive dissonance you live with every day. Read full review
90
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 12, 2024
With his maiden foray into drama, the writer/director continues to prove himself one of modern cinema’s true greats. Read full review
85
PolygonSiddhant AdlakhaSep 17, 2024
The result is a claustrophobic introspection into guilt and remorse, which hardly sounds like fitting material for a grandiose movie musical. But Oppenheimer’s focused approach to human drama makes it sing. Read full review
83
Original-CinChris KnightDec 13, 2024
The End may literally be a little tone deaf, but it is not morally senseless. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyMar 27, 2025
There’s no room for the sentimental here. No Grinch hearts suddenly grow three sizes. That’s not how it works in the real world, and Oppenheimer is interested instead in the smaller, more subtle shifts. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMar 26, 2025
If any recent release has the potential to become a cult classic it is this melodic warning from beneath the earth. Read full review
76
TheWrapSteve PondSep 1, 2024
In truth, the movie can be pretty ridiculous, too, with its wild ambition sometimes coming across as a little foolhardy. But overreaching might be the whole point of The End, which offers an end-times prescription for living: Hold the fantasy together as long as you can. And when in doubt, sing. Read full review
70
Little White LiesKatherine McLaughlinApr 2, 2025
Where the film really sings, however, is in its depiction of buried guilt and false hope. The beating heart of it develops through MacKay’s performance of pure naivety and his burgeoning relationship with Ingram’s Girl. Read full review
70
ColliderJason GorberSep 12, 2024
The End paradoxically feels ornamental and operatic while at the same time almost iconographic in its simplicity. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 9, 2024
What remains engaging throughout are the carefully textured performances—MacKay’s study of repressed energy and Ingram’s mix of wariness and gratitude are particular highlights—and the film’s myriad aesthetic graces. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeSep 1, 2024
The End requires complete submission to the off-kilter rules that govern this family and to Oppenheimer’s ambitions to radicalize the musical genre. It’s an admirable if uneven endeavor. Read full review
63
Washington PostTy BurrDec 12, 2024
Oppenheimer has made a chamber play of and for the damned, and while it never fully escapes the laboratory of ideas, it shows a daring and lethally sharp creative mind at work. More, please. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyDec 6, 2024
The experiment of "The End" may not entirely work, but it is good that it exists. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzDec 5, 2024
Clearly, Oppenheimer is an ambitious and courageous filmmaker – his chilling documentaries alone are enough to ensure his place in the pantheon. But so much of The End prioritizes purpose over execution, with the result stretched out over interminable lengths. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineMark HansonAug 31, 2024
Perhaps the script is deliberately harking back to a storytelling mode that was characteristic of Hollywood cinema for dramatic effect, but the musical aspect, while a neat gimmick, isn’t memorable or cohesive enough to make the homage, well, sing. Read full review
60
iChristina NewlandApr 2, 2025
Even if the film can feel airless at times, with long, solid shots of the survivors’ banal everyday lives, it does have much to say on the foibles of mankind – and the way society may very feasibly backslide into, well, The End. That, to me, is worth giving a chance. Read full review
60
EmpireIana MurrayMar 25, 2025
Joshua Oppenheimer’s uncompromising, apocalyptic odyssey thoughtfully unpacks the stories people tell themselves to survive — but don’t expect to be tapping your feet to its collection of lacklustre songs. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonDec 7, 2024
Oppenheimer is after something that drives right at the heart of what a musical is. To harmonize means to agree. It’s a public display of solidarity — a pact to parrot the same delusions. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearDec 4, 2024
Ultimately, The End is a cult movie that, until it eventually finds its cult, will be more admired than loved. It isn’t the last word on the pending apocalypse. It simply has the fortitude to go out singing. Read full review
60
The GuardianRadheyan SimonpillaiSep 13, 2024
At two and a half hours, Oppenheimer’s strange and ambitious deconstruction of human behaviour – with its bleak but adorning visuals and its novel spin on ideas we’ve seen in The Hunger Games and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth – can also be draining. Maybe that’s intentional. Read full review
60
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganSep 11, 2024
The End’s major downfall, aside from being overlong and ideologically tepid, is that its musical numbers are dull and discordant. Read full review
60
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannSep 9, 2024
The End is a challenging film and the rewards may be minimal, but that it exists at all is a miracle itself. Read full review
50
Time OutElizabeth WeitzmanJan 30, 2025
Mostly admirable for its ambition, which often feels nearly endless – as, alas, does the film itself. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerDec 12, 2024
Oppenheimer never quite embraces the absurdity and madness of his own proposition, and instead engages in a surprisingly flat tragicomedy of manners. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 11, 2024
This isn’t so much a traditional musical drama a la “Wicked” as it is a turgid, heavy-handed and preachy melodrama interspersed with musical numbers that are serviceable but hardly memorable. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubJacob OllerDec 4, 2024
The melancholy absurdity—dragged out over two-and-a-half hours—doesn’t revel in its ironic condemnation. It’s a long sigh, an off-key parody song performed before humanity’s curtain call. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 17, 2024
The End is a bold swing, and I’m glad it exists. But for all the stuff it throws at us, the film is frustratingly, wearingly one-note. Read full review
50
LooperReuben BaronSep 9, 2024
The problem is it can't find nearly enough to say to justify its 148 minute runtime, exhausting interest and failing to build its intriguing big ideas into a compelling story. Read full review
50
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 4, 2024
All that being said, the songs are impressive enough that it’s not hard to envision “The End” becoming something of a cult musical. Five years from now, maybe less, some excited college freshman is going to convince the head of their college drama department to let them put on a stage version of this musical. And chances are, it will be a smash. This is material that, with some editing of its book (er, script), a spotlight on the songs, and natural physical intimacy, could flourish on the stage. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeAug 31, 2024
There may never be another film like The End, and that alone makes it special, though surely all involved would prefer for it to be seen. As it is, the film feels like an obtuse missive, hidden in plain sight, just waiting for intrepid seekers to unearth it. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 11, 2025
These poor players have all hand-picked their roles, and are resolved to strut and fret as convincingly as they can, right up until the curtain plummets. Read full review
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