Blackwoods 2002

Matt Sullivan is haunted to the point of mental instability by his guilt over the death of a girl named Molly in a car crash he caused years ago. Driving drunk after an argument with his girlfriend, he was distracted by the car radio and fatally struck the girl as she crossed the road. Years later, Matt heads to the Blackwoods of Colorado for a weekend with his new girlfriend Dawn (Keegan Connor Tracy), hoping to escape the ghosts of that night and find a semblance of peace among the pines and quiet chill of the high country.

During a stop in a small town, they share lunch at a local diner, where an uneasy atmosphere settles around them as locals shoot wary glances their way. On the road, Sheriff Harding pulls Matt over and asks who he is and what he is doing passing through the area. After Matt explains that he’s seeking a private retreat, the sheriff lets him go, but the encounter plants a seed of doubt that lingers in the mind of a man already unsteady from his past.

Back at a rambling, decay-tinted motel, Matt encounters Greg—the debauched clerk and owner—who tries to overcharge for the room while a sense of menace hums just beneath the surface. Dawn and Matt share a night of passion, but when she steps out for a walk, a stranger with an axe slips into their room. Matt fights him off, escapes, and phones the police, prompting a tense arrival by Sheriff Harding who, despite finding no attacker, remains suspicious of Matt’s motives for visiting the Blackwoods. The fear and isolation push Matt toward calling his friend Jim for help as he sets out to search for Dawn himself, hoping to unravel the danger that seems to be closing in around him.

In the woods, a shocking turn unfolds as Matt is captured by a rural family—the Franklins—who restrain him and stage a brutal, mock trial to determine his guilt in Molly’s death. Dawn suddenly reappears and reveals a twisted truth: she is Molly’s twin sister, and she lured Matt here as part of a calculated revenge. Matt is found guilty by the family and sentenced to be hunted in the forest, an ordeal that drives him deeper into panic and a thinning grip on reality. He escapes and fights his way through the trees, ambushing and killing two Franklin family members, Jack and John, in a brutal, desperate chase through the underbrush. Jim arrives, having tracked Matt down, but Matt, convinced that Jim is in league with the others, turns on his friend and kills him as well.

As the hunt intensifies, the truth inside Matt’s mind begins to unravel: the Dawn-and-Franklin scheme never existed, and every encounter since the trip to the Blackwoods has been a carefully crafted hallucination born from guilt and fear. Sheriff Harding follows a trail of clues from Matt deeper into the forest and to an abandoned Franklin house, discovering the ruins and the reality that the trial was a fabrication born from Matt’s troubled psyche. The sheriff finds Jim’s dead body and gives chase, but the pursuit ends in tragedy when Matt steps into oncoming traffic and is struck by a speeding truck, his psyche finally shattering from the weight of his memories and delusions.

In the final, quiet beat, Sheriff Harding recounts the bizarre, heartbreaking night to a diner waitress, explaining that Matt’s guilt-ridden mind conjured this waking nightmare around Dawn and the Franklins as a way to process what he had done—and what he could no longer face. The townsfolk drift back to their evenings, while the tale lingers: a man who lost himself in guilt, only to be undone by a truth he could never fully grasp.