In the snow-clad wilderness, after a hard day’s work, a crew of loggers wraps up a massive roast and a sense of icy quiet settles over the site. A grotesque axe-wielding man bursts from the trees, mowing through the workers with brutal efficiency, then runs the foreman through a lethal strike with the circular saw. The scene is stark, brutal, and unflinching, setting a tone of primal danger that shadows the rest of the story.
Sometime later, five young first-time offenders—Marty, Trish, Zack, Rosa, and CB—are taken into the woods for a week-long rehabilitation excursion led by Sergeant A. Hoke and a stern guidance counselor. Upon arrival, the group is told to sleep in tents while the adults take the cabin. In the nearby woods, a grizzly bear stalks a deer, but a giant man emerges from the trees, Gunnar Wolfgang Bunyan and effortlessly kills the grizzly, then skins and cleans the carcass, displaying a calm, almost ritualistic efficiency.
Back at camp, a local hermit, Meeks, appears uninvited before being driven off by Hoke. The encounter hints at a local lore that bleeds into the campers’ fate, a foreshadowing of the awe and danger that these woods can breed.
The following morning, Hoke leads the youths on a grueling hike. At lunch, Zack finds the skeleton of a massive ox protruding from the ground and pockets a horn as a souvenir. Later, Bunyan visits the site, which is revealed to be the grave of his ox, Babe. Discovering the horn is missing, he erupts in a rage that hints at a tragic history behind the legend.
As the group takes another break, Martin and Zack continue passing the horn back and forth. A gust ruffles the horn, sending a chill through the air and revealing their location to the towering figure. Bunyan closes in on Trish, and with a single, brutal strike, he splits her in two. He then bisects Hoke, but his axe lodges in a tree, giving the others a narrow chance to flee back to the cabin. Bunyan yanks their van away, leaving the campers stranded and retreating to his cave as the threat deepens.
Seeing Meeks again, the group lets him join them in the cabin, where the horn catches his eye. He speaks in a tall tale about Paul Bunyan being based on a real person—someone born with gigantism that gave him extraordinary lifespan. He explains Babe’s wound and the reason Bunyan later retaliated against the loggers, forcing the locals to seal him inside an abandoned mine. Meeks recounts Bunyan’s growth to his full height in the mountains and insists they must return the horn or face certain death.
Zack darts from the cabin with the horn, hurling it into the forest in a desperate bid for safety. The horn strikes a strange return arc and impales Zack as Bunyan materializes from the trees. Bunyan drags Zack’s body away and returns to his cave to sharpen his axe, a deadly ritual that mirrors the tribe-like terror gripping the woods.
Meanwhile, CB’s father—the local sheriff—is summoned to the area for a bear sighting but finds the body of Hoke instead, a grim beacon of the escalating danger. Bunyan returns with renewed fury, attacking the cabin and dragging Rosa out to slam her against a tree, killing her in a brutal, near-ritual fashion. The group makes for an escape, but Bunyan gives chase, his footsteps a muffled drum of impending doom.
The sheriff arrives and shoots Bunyan with tranquilizer darts, finally incapacitating him. Meeks reappears from the shadows and raises the others at gunpoint, defending Bunyan in a tense and eerie standoff. He shoots Martin and moves to kill the rest, but Bunyan suddenly comes to life again and decapitates Meeks, ending the hermit’s strange alliance.
The final chase leads Bunyan to a footbridge over a river where the trio—[Sheriff], [CB], and [Ms. K]—are trapped as a posse of local hunters arrives. They unleash their rifles, blasting Bunyan with firepower until he collapses into the river and sinks beneath the cold current. The sheriff, CB, and Ms. K, breathing heavily, leave with the posse, the danger finally fading into the snowy silence as the woods reclaim their quiet, haunted memory.
