Mr. Jones 2014

Scott and Penny relocate to the woods for a year, hoping to film a nature documentary in peace, but the quiet quickly proves fragile as tensions rise and uncertainty creeps in. What begins as a simple assignment soon reveals that their project isn’t as well conceived as they thought, and the strain of living off the grid pushes them toward a breaking point. The turning point comes when Scott’s backpack is stolen, setting off a pursuit that leads them to a nearby cabin surrounded by eerie stick figures and other unsettling objects. Curiosity wins out, and they enter the place to retrieve the bag, only to uncover a basement and a sub-basement that hint at a far deeper mystery. They suspect this is the home of the enigmatic, almost legendary artist known as Mr. Jones, a man whose presence feels both intimate and unnerving.

Motivated by the discovery, they decide to center their documentary on Mr. Jones. Scott returns to New York City and discovers that Jones is a elusive figure who has been quietly sending his unsettling artworks to random people across the country, seemingly without pattern or motive. In interviews with several recipients, he learns that the eerie figures have coincided with troubling events in their lives. One person even warns him to abandon the investigation and, if he ever encounters Jones, to simply run away.

Back in the woods, Penny heads out with her camera to photograph Jones’s figures. At one point, Jones approaches silently from behind, carrying a fresh figure. Penny attempts to request an interview, but Jones is unresponsive. She films him from a distance as he sets up the new figure. Dark clouds gather, and a chorus of thunderous sounds fills the air as Penny catches sight of a gnarled, disfigured face watching from the bushes. She retreats, but not before catching Jones in the act of placing the figure. When night falls, Penny’s fear intensifies, and she witnesses the eerie moment when Jones’s lantern seems to dissolve into one of the lights of their own cabin, after which Jones vanishes. Later, Penny tells Scott she felt safe and that he seemed to have guided her home.

With newfound resolve, Scott and Penny plan to return to Jones’s house. They lie in wait outside until Jones leaves, then sneak inside with Penny coordinating from a distance. Scott descends into both the basement and the sub-basement, discovering an underground maze of tunnels filled with even more stick figures. In one chamber he finds a doll-sized figure with candles for eyes, which he stuffs into his backpack as he searches for an exit.

Outside, Penny tries to warn him, but a crash from her camera interrupts her. Scott loses track of her and soon realizes he cannot contact her. When he finally finds the right passage and escapes the house, Penny is missing.

Scott hurries back to his own cabin and finds a disturbing development: stick figures have invaded both his front lawn and the interior. Penny appears in their bedroom—seemingly unharmed—yet she has no memory of how she arrived, suggesting she may have been moved or manipulated during his absence.

From that point, the world around them becomes a blur of dreamlike, disorienting episodes: strange noises outside, a monitor displaying footage of themselves that they never recorded, and a duplicate of Scott attempting to break into their house. Time itself seems distorted, turning a night into something that feels endless despite the daylight clocks. During one particularly tense sequence, urgent knocking at the door erupts into a terrifying moment: Penny urges Scott to open it, assuming Mr. Jones is there, but a masked figure erupts at the threshold and the wind drags the intruder away, leaving Scott clutching only the sack-like mask.

The pair decide to leave the area, but separation follows. While trekking out, Scott encounters a second Penny—one who urges him to return the stolen doll. Another Penny insists she never returned to the cabin and warns that Mr. Jones has vanished; she urges him to abandon the quest and depart for good.

Scott eventually finds himself back in Jones’s house, moving once more into the sub-basement where hooded figures pursue him. He returns the doll and relights the candles in its eyes, then drapes a hood over his own head, transforming into a figure that is as unsettling as the setting itself.

In the final scenes, Scott shares a farewell kiss with Penny, but a voiceover reveals a startling truth: Scott has become Mr. Jones. The film presents Mr. Jones as a shaman who guards the boundary between the dream world and waking life. By disturbing that balance, Scott and Penny have destabilized the threshold, leaving Scott to take up the burden of protection now that the boundary between worlds has shifted. The conclusion leaves them both changed, their fate bound to a mysterious intersection where art, dream, and danger converge.