Project MKHEXE (2025)

Presented as a lost, unfinished documentary uploaded to the internet in 2014, the film follows aspiring filmmaker Tim Wilson (Ignacyo Matynia), who returns home to document his younger brother Sean’s funeral after his unexpected suicide. Days later, Tim finds his parents secretly discarding Sean’s belongings. Among the items, he discovers a trove of disturbing material — notes, drawings, tapes, and recordings — all centered around an obscure internet urban legend: Project MKHEXE.

Tim also finds Sean’s phone, filled with unsettling videos from the day he died, suggesting he was conducting an experiment at a childhood treehouse. Tim confronts his parents, who deny everything, and enlists the help of Sean’s friend Nicole. She reveals Sean had become obsessed with MKHEXE, a supposed Cold War-era CIA mind control experiment blending broadcast tech, hypnosis, and occult practices. The project's alleged "Nightmare Machine" caused madness and death before being covered up and erased from history. Now, any trace of MKHEXE online is mysteriously vanishing.

Inspired by Sean’s evidence and a cryptic final voicemail, Tim and Nicole begin filming a documentary to investigate the truth. They find signs MKHEXE is real: testimonies, photos, and strange media sent to Sean anonymously, with signs pointing that the program may continue due to the efforts of an ancient cult who are trying to summon a forgotten god, Kzathguul. But when they try to verify his claims, all the evidence is corrupted or gone.

Tim spirals into paranoia. Family interviews unravel tensions—his mother Gloria is consumed by grief, his father detached, and Tim himself furious. He discovers Nicole broke Sean’s heart, driving a wedge between them. Eventually kicked out, Tim relocates and stumbles upon the treehouse, finding the Nightmare Machine and watching the MKHEXE video.

Soon, Tim displays MKHEXE-infection symptoms — paranoia, insomnia, hallucinations. He reunites with Nicole, and they uncover a lost tape of Sean seemingly possessed. As their reality unravels, Tim and Nicole are attacked by infected friends and retreat to her apartment, where they document Tim’s decline. They trace MKHEXE’s origins to a retired CIA doctor, Viktor Teufel, who hints belief gives MKHEXE power. On the road to find him, Tim crashes the car after another seizure.

The documentary fractures, revealing the grim ending of the tales from the “Box of Nightmares:" suicides, sacrifices, prophetic visions. Back in the present, Tim and Nicole fail to stop the infection spreading at a police station. Nicole is fatally stabbed; she makes Tim promise to broadcast the truth.

Tim returns home, only to see on the TV that Sean was killed by their parents in self-defense. Enraged, Tim murders them. Then, the TV reveals the real story: Sean killed himself to break free from MKHEXE. Horrified, Tim blinds himself and finishes the documentary. In the final moments, the MKHEXE video plays—now fully visible, as viewers have come to believe in it — inviting Kzathguul into our reality.