In a continuation of its modern armada of self-produced movies, Netflix dished out another low-quality thriller named End of the Road. The movie’s creators seemed to have put a lot of effort into finding a brand-new idea for a thriller but ended up with an increasingly unrealistic and abstract plot that is anything but thrilling. From forced seeming social issues like racism, over graphic moments of violence, to attempts at comedic relief and unrelated moments of sadness – the creators of End of The Road wanted to do too much and delivered too little.

End of the Road is a freshly released Netflix thriller about a Californian single mother, her brother, and her two kids, who have to foreclose their house and move to Texas after the children’s father died. During their three days long road trip through the desert, the family becomes witness to a murder and subsequently gets pulled into a fight for their lives against a mysterious drug boss.

The movie which was released in September 2022 is directed by Millicent Shelton who is mostly known for directing episodes of the show Titans. End of the Road stars anything but an A-list cast, with the main characters being rappers Queen Latifah and Ludacris. Both have starred in movies before but have not come to fame because of their acting experiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, End of the Road reached a whopping 33% on the “Tomatometer” and an audience score of 16%.

This low score can not only be attributed to the poor acting of rappers turned actors. In its 90 minutes of running time, a hundred things happen, but barely any of them contribute to the main storyline.

On their trip across the desert, the black Californian family is confronted with a case of extreme racism, which then, however, plays little role in the main plot. Meanwhile, for a hint of family drama, the family members’ behaviors, reactions, and problems are continuously artificially related to the death of the main character’s husband. While the other main characters’ behaviors are still somewhat understandable, though, everything the uncle of the children says and does seems unrealistic and forced.

The same goes for the dialogues between the characters which are lacking authenticity and seem artificially created with the sole purpose of connecting scenes with each other. Most of the topics the family talked about felt like they were included because they foreshadow the issues and reactions that are to follow. Because of these descriptive dialogues, while it increases in abstractness, the plot also becomes oddly predictable.

The one good thing about the movie was the scenic shots of the desert and the choice of this location. The rough terrain of the desert adds more feeling of danger to the movie than any of the evil antagonistic characters could elicit. Because of this small positive factor, the movie deserves 1 out of four stars.

Overall, Netflix will need to reevaluate what is more important – the 10^th released thriller of the month or the creation of actually valuable films. Otherwise, the strategy of quantity over quality might become the End of the Road for their self-produced movies.