TRAUMA-ECTOMIE

After a violent car crash, Charlie wakes up in a remote, off-the-books psychiatric hospital. She’s told her estranged mother checked her in—but Charlie’s mother is dead. And worse, she’s the reason Charlie drove into that tree in the first place.

At the facility, healing isn’t about talking through your pain—it’s about extracting it. Through a radical treatment known as a Trauma-Ectomie, patients receive radioactive injections that make their psychological trauma mutate into physical forms—twisted creatures born from their suffering. These are then surgically removed, leaving patients calm, compliant… and oddly vacant.

Charlie’s fellow patients all carry the scars of attempted suicide. Vic, a flamboyant Indigenous man, clings to the memory of his lost Staffy—until the dog erupts from his chest and is cut away. When Charlie sees Vic again, he doesn’t remember ever owning a dog. He’s sedated, smiling—and told he’s “going home.”

But Charlie soon learns what “going home” really means: euthanasia and incineration.

Meanwhile, staff begin disappearing. Everyone’s trauma is manifesting—except Charlie’s. That’s because hers already did. Long ago. It caused the car crash. And now, the insectoid mutant born from her complex PTSD is stalking the halls, exacting revenge on the facility that preys on the vulnerable.

As the hospital descends into chaos, Charlie must confront her past, face the abusive legacy of her mother, and battle Dr. Nightingale—the icy therapist behind the Trauma-Ectomie program—and her own monstrous creation.

Because the only way out... is through.