Four wealthy friends convene at a remote mountain estate for a private retreat as the world outside unravels under a wave of AI-generated falsehoods. The house belongs to Hugo "Souper" Van Yalk and sits high in the Utah ranges; he calls the property Mountainhead. Venis "Ven" Parish arrives as the richest of the quartet, the founder and CEO of the social platform Traam, which has recently rolled out features that let deepfakes and algorithmically amplified lies spread with unprecedented speed. Jeff Abredazi comes as the founder of Bilter, an AI firm whose fact-checking engines threaten to neutralize that pipeline of disinformation. Randall Garrett, the group's long-time mentor and elder Brewster, joins them despite an announcement that he has incurable cancer; he acts wary but invested, having put money into Traam. Souper, considerably less wealthy than the others at roughly $521 million, opens his home hoping to press his friends to back Slowzo, a lifestyle "super-app" he envisions.

They set a tone of forced conviviality over the first evening. The men exchange small talk about stock tickers and press coverage while their servers and feeds ripple with global unrest. Ven defends the latest Traam updates when Jeff pushes back; Jeff argues that Bilter's verification tools expose how Traam's new features seed chaos. Ven responds with dismissal, insisting he will not roll back what he has launched. Randall sits between them, listening intently; he voices hope that technological advancement and Ven's enterprise could one day offer a path that helps him manage his illness. Souper watches, eager to pivot the conversation to Slowzo and to win investment that would finally make him a billionaire.

On the second day they puncture the surface of their alliance with a Brewster rite: the four men take snowmobiles to a ridge, hike a short distance, and write numbers on their chests with bright lipstick to mark their net worth. They array themselves in descending order--Ven highest, Randall second, Jeff third, Souper lowest--and pose with a private, self-satisfied solemnity. Returning to Mountainhead, they scroll through newsfeeds and share grim laughter as they see governments starting to buckle in countries hit hardest by algorithmic manipulation. The chaos drives up the market value of regulator-proof services; Bilter's shares jump, inflating Jeff's personal fortune until one morning his number on a screen eclipses Randall's. Randall explodes at the swap of Brewster hats and at the apparent disrespect in Jeff's triumph; the argument turns sharp and personal.

News arrives that the White House wants to speak with Ven. During a video call with the President, Ven rebuffs any demand to throttle Traam's features or to accept government-imposed safeguards. He insists that Traam must remain free to innovate and refuses to accept regulatory limits. Afterwards, seated around Souper's dining table, Ven, Randall, and Souper conspire in earnest. They decide not to comply with the President's wishes but to instead accelerate existing instability in order to produce a rupture they can then manage; their plan is to leverage the disorder into a new technocratic order with friends in high places at the helm. Jeff watches the plotting and grows alarmed; he cannot abide the intentional escalation of harm for the sake of power.

Jeff asks Randall to meet away from the others. In private he proposes a counterstrategy: Jeff offers that he and Randall work together to wrest operational control of Traam away from Ven and to cooperate with the government to install safeguards, thereby containing the platform's corrosive effects. Jeff frames his pitch as mutually beneficial -- protecting Bilter's reputation while shepherding the world away from further collapse. Randall hears Jeff out but worries that constraining Ven and Traam will undercut the only thing Randall sees as a possible lifeline for his condition. Fearing that a government-moderated Traam will halt the technical frontier Randall wants to exploit, Randall discloses Jeff's proposal to Ven and Souper instead of joining him.

Ven receives the betrayal with cold clarity. He and Randall and Souper begin to form a plan that crosses a threshold from business aggression to physical threat: they decide that eliminating Jeff is the surest way to annex Bilter intact and prevent any governmental co-option that would hinder their aims. They do not speak about laws or boardrooms anymore; they speak about logistics in the rooms and corridors of Mountainhead. Their plotting produces two hurried attempts on Jeff's life that are clumsy and mismanaged. The first attempt unfolds during the night, when Jeff is awake and moving through the house; whatever preparations the trio make fail to find Jeff where they expect him. The second attempt occurs inside the estate and is equally botched; the three men misread timing and circumstances, and Jeff escapes with his life. Both times, the perpetrators are forced to abandon their designs and retreat, frustrated by their inability to finish the malicious acts they have conceived.

After these failures, the mood turns frantic and desperate. Jeff, recognizing that his colleagues will not desist and now act with lethal intent, improvises a plan to regain agency. He maneuvers them through the house and leads Ven, Randall, and Souper on a breathless chase from room to room. He moves with calculated panic, past glass and timber, past the kitchen and up narrow flights, attempting to isolate himself. He slips into a locked sauna off the main suite to hide, sealing the door. Inside the heat chamber he collapses against the wooden bench, panting, while outside the three men bang on the door and discuss methods of finishing him.

They find a can of gasoline in a utility closet and wheel it toward the sauna. Ven, Randall, and Souper clear a path and ignite the possibility of immolation: they will set the wooden room alight and burn Jeff alive. They talk through the act with a mix of clinical detachment and sudden, immediate guilt. Jeff hears them beyond the wood and realizes they intend to close the plan there. In a moment of raw improvisation, he scrambles for paper and a tablet and types out a binding agreement on the spot. With trembling hands and under duress, he drafts terms that assign Bilter to Traam and stipulate that he will be freed once the paperwork is signed. The three men, eager to secure the asset and afraid of carrying out a murder that would leave traces, agree to Jeff's rushed instrument; they sign to avoid making a scene and to take possession of Bilter while keeping plausible deniability.

Dawn comes, and the house is quiet except for the residual tension around a signed contract. Jeff, bloodless and shaken, emerges from the sauna after the men release him. The four sit down to a breakfast that is stiff and ritualized. Jeff confronts them directly about the previous night and the fact that they attempted to kill him. Ven, Randall, and Souper eat and split small apologies that lack remorse; they admit that the real motive behind their aggression was to secure Bilter and to quash any obstacle to their broader plan, not to settle a personal vendetta. In the course of the conversation they also disclose another retreat from their darker ambitions: the idea of using the chaos to stage coups and institute a technocratic regime has lost its cachet for them. The three men say they no longer find political overthrow exciting in the real, messy terms it would require.

Jeff insists the contract they forced him to sign will not stand without a legitimate negotiation; he tells them he will fight the deal when he returns to the city. Ven surprises him by stepping out of the breakfast room and then returning with a different demeanor. He asks Jeff to do a lawful, public transaction: he wants Jeff to join Traam under a proper acquisition, not under duress. Ven lays out an offer that formalizes Bilter's transfer and includes terms Jeff requested to ensure continuity and protections for the technology's role. Jeff considers the proposition and sets one clear condition: Randall must have no part in the arrangement. Jeff fears Randall's influence will reintroduce the very compromises that drove him to resist Traam in the first place. Ven hesitates and then accepts the stipulation, nodding and signing. Jeff, seeing the opportunity to preserve some elements of Bilter and to get out of an untenable moral position, agrees to the negotiated sale.

At the signing, Jeff tells Ven that even if Bilter becomes part of Traam, he does not believe Traam will succeed in the long run; he predicts that the platform will fall apart despite the infusion of fact-checking technology. Ven answers without flinching: the risk of failure is precisely what makes the venture thrilling. He says that the possibility of being forced out later is part of the excitement for both of them; they trade a half-smile that registers competition as much as reconciliation. Jeff also vows that if he is folded into Ven's company, he will work to remove Ven when the time comes. Ven hears that threat as a promise rather than a threat, and their exchange ends with a mutual recognition of the precarious partnership they have stitched together under pressure.

Randall watches this entire exchange from a windowed landing above the lawn. He stands alone on the ridge path that leads away from Mountainhead, looking down at the men he taught, mentored, and ultimately betrayed his friend for--Ven and Souper. The camera follows him as he mounts a horse and begins to ride down the trail, his posture slumped, the set of his shoulders registering defeat and sorrow. He does not speak; he pulls his brim down and keeps riding until the house shrinks behind the pines.

Souper, who has now achieved billionaire status through the deal, remains at Mountainhead. The film closes with him seated in a chair that faces the vast, serrated skyline of the Utah peaks. He opens Slowzo on his phone and follows a guided meditation session on the app that he has long promoted as the center of his ambitions. He breathes along with the voice in the headphones while surveying the same mountains that hosted the rupture between friends. The final image lingers on Souper's profile as the app's meditation cues continue; outside, the world continues to reel from the effects of Traam and the technologies the four men shaped. No character dies in the events at Mountainhead: attempts are made, contracts are signed, alliances are strained, and the four men part with different goods gained and different losses endured, closing the retreat with new arrangements and unresolved tensions that will follow them beyond the estate's pines.

At the end of Mountainhead (2025), after two failed attempts to kill Jeff by his billionaire friends Randall, Hugo, and Ven, Jeff is trapped in the sauna with gasoline poured around him. He offers to sign over his AI company Bilter to Traam, Ven's company, in exchange for his release. The next morning, Jeff is freed after signing the contract, confronts his friends at breakfast, and prepares to leave. Randall leaves dejected, Ven and Jeff discuss the future of the deal, and Souper, having become a billionaire through the deal, meditates overlooking the mountains.

The ending unfolds as follows:

The three friends--Randall, Hugo, and Ven--after two bungled attempts to kill Jeff, finally corner him in the sauna of the Mountainhead mansion. They pour gasoline inside, preparing to immolate him. Jeff, desperate, hastily drafts a contract to transfer ownership of his AI company, Bilter, to Ven's company, Traam, in exchange for his life. The others agree to this deal and release him from the sauna.

The next morning, Jeff emerges from the sauna and joins the others for breakfast. The atmosphere is tense and awkward. Jeff confronts his friends, who remain unapologetic about their actions. They admit they have lost interest in their previous plans to launch coups against governments amid the global turmoil.

Jeff prepares to leave Mountainhead. Before departing, he has a private conversation with Ven. Jeff tells Ven he will try to fight the deal he signed under duress. Ven asks Jeff to do the deal legitimately, and Jeff agrees on the condition that Randall be excluded from the agreement. Jeff expresses skepticism about Traam's success even with Bilter's help. Ven, however, professes faith in his company and says that if Jeff joins, he will eventually try to force Ven out, which Ven finds exciting.

Randall, who has been watching this exchange from a distance, rides away from Mountainhead looking dejected and isolated.

The film closes with Souper, who has finally achieved billionaire status through the deal with Jeff, sitting outside overlooking the mountain scenery. He follows a meditation exercise on his app Slowzo, symbolizing his newfound status and perhaps a moment of calm amid the chaos.

Thus, the fates of the main characters at the end are:

• Jeff: Released but bound by a contract he signed under duress; determined to fight the deal and skeptical of its success.
• Ven: Confident in his company Traam and the deal, ready to face future challenges with Jeff.
• Randall: Dejected, leaves Mountainhead alone, excluded from the deal.
• Souper: Achieves billionaire status and appears contemplative, meditating in the mountains.

This ending scene-by-scene narrative highlights the fractured relationships, the uneasy alliances, and the personal ambitions of the characters amid a backdrop of global crisis and moral ambiguity.

Yes, characters do face death threats and near-death experiences in Mountainhead (2025), but no character actually dies on screen.

• Jeff is the primary target of multiple assassination attempts by the other three billionaire friends--Randall, Hugo, and Venis. They try to kill him by pushing him over a railing, suffocating him with a pillow, and finally by attempting to immolate him in a sauna using gasoline. However, Jeff survives all these attempts. In the sauna scene, just before they set the fire, Jeff offers to make a deal, which leads to his release after signing a contract under duress.

• Randall is implied to be doomed eventually, with suggestions that he may have his consciousness uploaded or be sent to another planet, but it is stated that he will "eventually die for sure." This is more of a future inevitability rather than an immediate death in the film.

• The other characters--Venis, Hugo, and Souper--do not die during the film. Souper achieves billionaire status by the end, and Venis and Jeff continue their tense relationship.

In summary, while there are intense and violent attempts on Jeff's life, no character actually dies during the events of the movie. The deaths are mostly avoided or deferred, with the film ending on a note of ongoing conflict and power struggles among the characters.

Yes, the movie Mountainhead (2025) has a post-credit scene. After the main story concludes with Jeff and Venis making a tense deal and Randall leaving dejected, the film cuts to Souper, who has become a billionaire through the deal with Jeff. Souper is shown overlooking the mountain scenery around his home while following a meditation exercise on the app Slowzo, symbolizing a moment of calm and reflection after the chaotic events.

This scene serves as a quiet epilogue rather than a traditional teaser or cliffhanger, emphasizing the aftermath of the deal and the characters' new statuses. There are no additional mid- or post-credit scenes beyond this final moment.

Randall, Hugo, and Venis attempt to kill Jeff because they believe he has betrayed them by planning to take his AI system, BILTER, to the U.S. government to regulate Venis' AI and stop misinformation, which threatens their plans. Randall fears Jeff is standing in the way of their ambitions, including Venis' transhumanist tech goals, and they rationalize that killing Jeff might save lives in the future. This leads to several comedic assassination attempts throughout the film.

The trio first tries to throw Jeff off a stairwell, which fails comically. Next, they attempt to smother him with a pillow while he sleeps, but Jeff escapes. Eventually, they trap him in a sauna, douse the door and inside with gasoline, and prepare to immolate him. Jeff's desperate negotiation in the sauna leads to a deal that spares his life.

While trapped in the sauna, Jeff hastily drafts terms of an agreement to sign over his AI system, BILTER, to Venis' company, Traam. The others agree to release him after working out the details. The next morning, Jeff confronts his friends and agrees to the deal on the condition that Randall be excluded. However, Jeff expresses doubt that Traam will succeed even with BILTER's help.

Randall Garrett, played by Steve Carell, is the elder statesman of the group and is terminally ill. He fears Jeff's plan will block his hope of using Venis' transhumanist technology to upload his brain to the cloud. Randall instigates the plan to kill Jeff and is involved in the assassination attempts. At the end, Randall is excluded from the deal and is seen riding away from Mountainhead looking dejected.

Hugo 'Souper' Van Yalk, played by Jason Schwartzman, is the pitiable owner of the lodge, initially worth about 500 million dollars. He is promised billionaire status if he helps with the plan against Jeff. By the film's end, after the deal with Jeff goes through, Souper finally achieves billionaire status and is shown overlooking the mountain scenery while following a meditation exercise.

The movie Mountainhead (2025) is not family friendly; it is rated TV-MA for mature audiences due to severe profanity, mild sexual dialogue, mild violence, moderate alcohol/drug use, and moderate frightening/intense scenes.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects for children or sensitive viewers include:

• Frequent and strong use of explicit language, including multiple uses of the F-word from the start and worsening throughout.
• Mild sexual dialogue without explicit scenes.
• Mild violence and gore, though not graphic.
• Moderate depiction of alcohol and drug use.
• Some scenes with moderate intensity or frightening elements, likely related to tense interactions among characters.

The film is a dark satire centered on four wealthy men in a luxurious mountain mansion, focusing on their conversations and behavior, which may include cynical or harsh themes unsuitable for younger or sensitive viewers.