When Athena Raymond went to see “ ,” she knew she’d witness some “dark scenes,” she says. She read the Colleen Hoover book, and , she felt the novel showed an accurate and unvarnished side of abuse and hoped the film would do the same. Raymond believes it did in some ways, but some aspects of the movie and its marketing seemed a little off to her, she tells TODAY.
com. “I was definitely shocked that at the very minimum (there wasn’t) some sort of (trigger) warning,” the 23-year-old from New Jersey explains. “The way the movie is marketed is so not (showing it) in an abusive, violent light.
” Some assets for the film, especially the and trailers, prominently display domestic violence imagery, but some survivors have shared that other promotional content they saw online seemed to paint the film in a lighthearted way. Raymond is one of dozens of self-described survivors of domestic violence sharing their experiences and reactions to “It Ends with Us” on social media. Some of their other criticisms include a lack of trigger warning and failure to prominently share resources for survivors.
Sony Pictures Entertainment, the film’s distributor, declined to comment to TODAY.com on criticisms of how the film was marketed and the lack of content warning, referring TODAY.com to No More, a domestic violence prevention organization involved in making the film.
No More offered guidance on portraying domestic violence and tied to the film. However, the resources did n.