Baghead

The four actors attend an art festival and watch Jett's low-budget movie. After the screening, Jett explains that he kept the budget extremely lean by not telling his actors they were in a movie until the final piece was ready. The moment reframes the whole project as a meta cinema experiment.

The group leaves the party and discusses their frustration at being cast as extras. They decide to drive to Chad's isolated cabin to write their own movie and create roles to star in. The plan marks a shift from mere acting to making their own film magic.

They arrive at Chad's cabin in the woods. Michelle gets drunk and goes to bed, while Chad makes advances. She rejects him, then vomits outside and encounters a man with a bag over his head.

The next morning, Michelle believes the bag-head encounter might have been real but decides to turn it into a horror movie about a character with a bag over his head. The group begins to brainstorm a new project inspired by the strange incident.

At night, the group brainstorms ideas. Michelle writes notes to meet Matt in her room, and a bagged figure enters. She suspects it's Matt at first, then questions who might be sabotaging her, while Catherine denies involvement as Matt urges Michelle to stay.

The following morning, Chad wakes Matt and Michelle to report that Catherine is missing. He learns of Michelle's advances on Matt and leaves in distress, his screams echoing from the woods nearby.

Matt and Michelle find Chad's ripped T-shirt in the woods and dismiss it as a prank. Later, Michelle again moves toward Matt; he ascends to a room where bagheaded figures attack, revealed to be Chad and Catherine seeking revenge for the romance.

That night, the group encounters a baghead outside and discovers their car is disabled. They flee back into the cabin and barricade themselves as the baghead menace closes in around them.

The next day they decide to hike the 11 miles to the nearest freeway. They become lost in the woods, stumble upon an abandoned car, and are chased by baghead as they press onward.

Matt is caught and stabbed to death in front of the others during the chase. Catherine and Michelle reach the freeway and flag down a car, but it drives past. Chad emerges from the woods and is hit by the car, while Matt later reappears uninjured and the baghead is revealed to be Jett.

Sometime later at the hospital, Chad awakens and learns that Matt and Jett orchestrated the entire ordeal and had been secretly filming them to create a movie. He asks to see the footage, confronting the idea that their horror could be a publishable project.

Chad and the others decide to edit down the footage and submit it to a film festival, believing their real-life nightmare could become a successful movie. The plan reframes their experience as a potential premiere-ready work.

In the aftermath, the baghead identity is confirmed as Jett, the director who orchestrated the events. The ‘found footage’ framework is revealed as a setup for a cinematic project rather than a true kidnapping or murder.

The group threads the tangle of deception into a shared ambition: to edit, present, and showcase their story at a film festival, turning their traumatic experience into a self-aware, potentially acclaimed feature.