There are plenty of things you might find at the bottom of a bag of Cheetos. A few broken puffs. A pile of orange dust. Maybe that last piece you’ve been trying to shake loose for the past five minutes. But according to Blumhouse’s new horror short, Man at the Bottom of the Bag, there’s something else you should be worried about.
The short, written and directed by Joe Blaugrund, is the second installment in The Flavor of Fear, a collaboration between Blumhouse and Cheetos that turns a snack commercial into a miniature horror movie. This time, a woman named Monica dismisses a stranger’s cryptic warning, only to unleash a terrifying force from inside her bag of Cheetos Sweet Phantom Heat Puffs. It’s a mistake she has no hope of containing.
The warning is simple enough to sound ridiculous until it isn’t: there’s someone waiting at the bottom of the bag. And if you’ve ever been the person holding a bag of Cheetos upside down, desperately searching for the last puff, you may want to reconsider your approach.
Man at the Bottom of the Bag stars Farah Marwan as Monica, Brooks Ginnan as Cheetle, Laura Meadows as the Snack Lady and Jaelen Cooper as a new shopper. Hunter D’Ancona produced the short, with Grace Gallagher serving as director of photography, Eden Vanetek as production designer, and Joe Blaugrund and D’Ancona handling the editing. Ian White composed the music.
The film is part of Cheetos’ campaign for Sweet Phantom Heat Puffs, a flavor combining brown sugar, cinnamon and Sichuan pepper. The pepper is known for its distinctive tingling and numbing sensation, which gives the campaign a rather convenient excuse to make snack time feel like a supernatural encounter. The product hit store shelves on August 31, 2026.
This isn’t the first time Blumhouse and Cheetos have tried to make a snack run feel like a bad decision. The first short, Bill’s Favorite Snack, followed an office worker trapped in the soul-crushing routine of corporate America. After trying the new Cheetos flavor, Bill has an experience that reminds him what it means to feel alive. Naturally, the film takes that premise into supernatural horror territory.
Written and directed by Joe Grode, Bill’s Favorite Snack stars Jacob Staudenmaier as Bill, alongside Teresa Bascle as Janice and Joseph Lopez as Scary Face. The supporting cast includes JB Revell as the delivery man, with several other performers appearing as Bill’s coworkers and people around the office.
Where the first short finds horror in the daily grind of office life, Man at the Bottom of the Bag goes for a more immediate fear. Monica gets a warning, ignores it and discovers that some things are better left alone. It’s a classic horror setup, even if the cursed object in question happens to be a bag of flavored puffs.
Both shorts are part of The Flavor of Fear, which explores supernatural and monster horror through Cheetos’ new snack flavor. The campaign’s official website has more information about the collaboration, but the new short makes its own case for why you should think twice before reaching into the bottom of the bag.
After all, you can brush Cheetos dust off your fingers. Getting rid of whatever’s waiting down there in the black hole of the bottom of the bag may be a little harder.
