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Endless

3/10

Stars: Alexandra Shipp, Nicholas Hamilton, DeRon Horton, Catherine Lough Haggquist, Famke Janssen, Zoe Belkin, Ian Tracey, Eddie Ramos

Director: Scott Speer

Ghost meets Love Story. Why, the hero's ghost even appears behind the heroine and helps her with peeling an apple (guess the budget didn't run to a potter's wheel). 'We pretended that summer would last forever,' gushes the heroine (exec producer Shipp, passing amazingly comfortably for 18 even though she's 29).

It doesn't of course, or we wouldn't have a film, although what we do have closely resembles one of those early-morning movies-for-TV.

Riley's a mixed-race, straight-A student headed for a law degree, although she loves graphic art. Blue-eyed boy friend Chris (19-year-old Australian Hamilton) is a motor-bike enthusiast and high school dropout and they are besotted with each other. After a party, Riley borrows a car as Chris has had too much to drink to ride his bike, and there's a double smash, with Riley injured and Chris killed.

She is grief-stricken, as, to be fair, she would be. 'I started texting Chris tonight,' she wails to bestie Julia (Belkin). 'The worst part is I waited for him to text me back.' But Chris does find a way to get in touch with her even though, at first, she cannot see him. When Riley starts coughing up blood, I had visions of the couple reuniting amid golden clouds at the end, but perhaps the blood was wishful thinking on the girl's part. She does try to walk into the sea, as in the 1954 A Star is Born, but...enough of spoilers.

The acting is pretty awful all round, although with this script and a paper-thin plot, that's perhaps not too surprising. In fairness, the film does draw an easy tear or two before an end-credits crawl that unnecessarily scrolls on for seven minutes. Endless is right. On digital download.

David Quinlan

Canada/USA 2019. UK Distributor: The Movie Partnership. Colour (uncredited).
94 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 1, Swearing 1.

Review date: 19 Nov 2020