I'm not sure this movie is meant to be coherent. I don't want to come off as some hipster knowitall, but I do have some theories. This is a fun movie to think about.
SPOILERS LIKE A MOTHER
I have a theory. I don't know if it's the same as the director's vision. I don't know if there is even an intended coherent plot. I'm just a guy that likes to watch weird films and try to make sense of them. I love to debate, so feel free to disagree...
First, the only person the giant laptop-wielding jerk killed is his girlfriend. I think ginger guy kills Summer and Richards kills his business partners. The key to this interpretation is Larry Fessenden.
The painting with no face is supposed to be his dad. The suit and tie are exactly the same as Larry's, so I think we can assume he is supposed to be Richards' mental image of his father as a sleazy lying spokesman. We're never given much backstory except for his awkward phone call. Ironically, he seems to be very clear in his mind, so why can't Richards paint him?
There is a lot of focus on the real vs the conceived. Richards is surrounded by fake people projecting success working on an ad campaign for a cleaner that doesn't work by trying to take photos in a forest of a forest that portray a manufactured sense of "the forest." It's a ridiculous situation. Internally, his dad is shown as a corporate shill hawking bad products, tying this father image emotionally to Richards' dissatisfaction with his life. Only the fake is clear. Anything raw, like hippy chick Summer or the forest itself, become obscured or out of focus. Put the whole thing together and we have a central character that's lost touch with the real, is seriously uneasy about it, and might somehow blame it all on his father.
Back to the murders... He assumes ginger killed Summer. The weird musical number is his mental reenactment of what happened. I think we are meant to make that connection because ginger guy is combined with the father image, and we know that Fessenden is negative symbol. From here he starts disassociating, killing ginger guy (an event obscured by fog) and peeling derp's head open. The final image is self-realization where he merges his face with his father's and the 4-eyed demon drawing we see on his wall.
The plot is really loose and most of it is weird sound and imagery. Again, I'm not even sure there is supposed to be a linear plot or if this is more of a collage of strangeness. However, this is how my brain sorts through everything.
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