All Hallows’ Eve, 1862, casts Wormwood Ridge in a shadowy legend: two Confederate soldiers, the last of their company, are hunted through the woods. As the fabled Headless Vasile Albine rides in, he closes in with ruthless speed and claims their heads, leaving behind only silence and chilling whispers.
Present day, in eastern Kansas, seven teenagers—Seth [Elvin Dandel], his girlfriend Tiffany [Arianne Fraser], Lizzie [Trish Coren] and her boyfriend Doc [Joe Hartzler], Nash [Brent Lydic], Ava [Rebecca Mozo], and Liam [Billy Aaron Brown]—are heading to a party, chasing a night they hope will be unforgettable. A supposed shortcut through backroads leads them into trouble when their van wheels catch on an open bear trap, crippling the vehicle. Candy [Lizzie Prestel], a young tow truck driver who seems to drift into town as if by fate, appears and leads them to Wormwood Ridge, a place so tiny it doesn’t show up on any map.
Candy deposits the stranded group at her father, Pa Rusk’s [M. Steven Felty] garage and junkyard and offers a quick tour of a town preparing for its infamous Headless Horseman Celebration—an annual Halloween ritual that supposedly began in 1806 when the killer first stalked the area. The eerie history wraps around the town’s heartbeat as Lizzie and Tiffany wander off and discover the van has vanished. Seth, meanwhile, searches for Pa Rusk in the cluttered yard and is confronted by a headless figure who decapitates him and disappears with his severed head. Ava finds Seth’s lifeless body and returns to warn the others. Candy, with a grim calm, unfolds Wormwood Ridge’s long-buried tale: Headless, the Calvill Montgomery figure, was a 19th‑century serial killer who preyed on Wormwood’s children until the town hanged him in the square; his spirit has risen every seven years on Halloween to steal seven heads. The warning lands with the weight of a prophecy: they must flee before Headless comes for his next head.
The group attempts to flee into the surrounding forest, but a supernatural mist swallows the landscape, and Headless on horseback appears, scattering them in alarm. Tiffany is the first to fall to his blade; her head is claimed, and Headless vanishes once more. The remaining teens realize they are trapped in a sick loop, finding themselves back at Wormwood as the church bells begin to toll. They split up again: Liam and Lizzie search for a working vehicle, while Nash, Doc, and Ava seek weapons to mount a defense. The trio breaks into Kolchak Stillwall’s [Richard Moll] general store and seizes several guns, hoping to tilt the odds in their favor. But Headless returns, decapitating Doc in a sudden blaze of violence, and the group must improvise once more.
Pa Rusk returns to the fray, capturing Liam, Ava, and Lizzie and maneuvering them back into town under threat of worse than death. He ties them to chairs in a tense standoff, leaving Headless free to roam the streets. Candy, revealing a desperate truth, declares she’s not originally from Wormwood and intends to escape with the survivors if Headless’s hunger can be sated. A rescue attempt is sparked when Liam manages to call 911, drawing a patrol car to the edge of the town’s boundary; however Wormwood’s inhabitants ambush the responders, and Headless decapitates Lizzie in a shocking turn of events. Candy seizes Pa Rusk’s tow truck and runs him down, turning the vehicle into a brutal instrument of fate.
With the net tightening, Liam and Ava devise a final gambit to destroy Headless. They lure the rider toward the town’s fragile bridge, which stretches over a rushing river and is the one barrier Headless cannot cross—water. Candy arrives in the tow truck, and the trio uses the tow cable to anchor Headless and pull him onto the bridge. As Headless is dragged onto the wooden span, he erupts into flames, melting away into ash that feeds the bridge’s raging blaze. The conflagration consumes Wormwood Ridge, its buildings dissolving into dust and wind, leaving only Candy, Liam, and Ava standing amid the inferno as the river’s echo fades. The camera pulls back on the charred, silent bridge, the night finally quiet, with the trio the last survivors of a town that vanished into legend.
The tale blends old nightmare with new fear, a Halloween myth that tests friendship, courage, and the stubborn will to outlast myth itself. The past and present collide in a town where a single unresolved head can threaten everyone still breathing, and where a group of teens must decide how far they’ll go to survive a nightmare that refuses to stay buried.
