When a cheerleading team’s bus breaks down during a violent storm, the girls take shelter in an abandoned asylum where they're hunted by a masked doctor who exploits their deepest fears, turning each girl’s private nightmare into a personal death trap.

SYNOPSIS:

Twenty years ago

DR. CORNELIUS HAYES conducted illegal fear experiments at Ravenshollow Psychiatric Hospital, believing that extreme terror at the moment of death could reveal what lies beyond. When police discovered his experiments had killed 18 patients and staff, Hayes escaped into the night, presumed dead.

Present day. The Ravenshollow High cheerleading squad celebrates their fourth consecutive state championship. Six teenage girls—team captain SARAH CHEN(17), her best friend MAYA TORRES(17), anxious TINA OKAFOR*(16), social media-obsessed LEXI WASHINGTON (17), abuse survivor KENDRA PARK (16), and party girl ROXY PETROV (17)—board their team bus with COACH WILLIAMS as a storm approaches.

When the bus breaks down on a remote road, the driver leaves to find help but is murdered by Hayes. White wolves attack the bus, killing Coach Williams and forcing the girls to flee into the storm. They take shelter in the abandoned Ravenshollow Asylum.

Around a fire in the asylum's common room, the girls drink to calm their nerves and share their deepest fears: Tina's claustrophobia, Lexi's fear of drowning, Kendra's terror of being powerless, Roxy's horror of dying on camera, Maya's fear of burning, and Sarah's dread of losing everyone she loves. Unknown to them, Hayes watches through one-way glass, taking careful notes.

Hayes begins his new experiment, murdering each girl using their specific fear. Tina wakes sealed in a coffin and suffocates while scratching desperately at the wood. Lexi drowns in the asylum's hydrotherapy tank. After the group splits up, Roxy is tortured to death while being filmed, fulfilling her fear of dying on camera. Kendra is psychologically broken until she begs for death, reliving her childhood powerlessness.

Sarah discovers LINDA MARTINEZ (12), a missing girl who's been hiding in the asylum for weeks after escaping Hayes. Linda reveals two other girls—CINDY (16) and STEPHANIE(17)—are caged in the basement.

In Hayes' laboratory, Maya is suspended over a pool of acid. Hayes forces Sarah to hold a rope supporting Maya's weight, knowing Sarah's arms will eventually give out. As Sarah's strength fails, Maya tells her it's not her fault before falling into the acid and dissolving—a callback to Sarah's father dying while holding her hand, saying the same words.

Consumed by rage and grief, Sarah stabs Hayes with a scalpel. As he bleeds on his knees, she pushes him into his own acid pool, watching him dissolve. The four survivors—Sarah, Linda, Cindy, and Stephanie—escape as the storm causes the unstable asylum to collapse.

In police custody, Sarah confesses to murdering Hayes, but the Sheriff, who worked the original case twenty years ago, declares Hayes died when the building collapsed. The survivors are reunited with their families, forever bonded by their shared trauma.

One year later, the four survivors meet at the asylum ruins to honor their dead friends. Sarah, now 18 and headed to Stanford to study trauma surgery, has learned to live with being both survivor and killer. As they leave their memorial, butterflies surround them—a sign that their friends are at peace, while their killer is forgotten.

THEMES:

- The weaponization of trauma and fear

- Survivor's guilt and the burden of living when others died

- The transformation from victim to survivor to protector

- The price of survival and moral compromises

- Finding family through shared trauma

- The importance of remembering victims, not their killers

TONE:

A brutal psychological slasher that uses personal fears as murder methods, grounded in real emotional trauma. Combines classic asylum horror with modern teenage vulnerability, building to a morally complex climax where the Final Girl must become a killer to stop a monster.

POM POM PSYCHO