By the Sword


            On a dark and rainy night, a chiropractor opens a door to let an unseen patient into her office. When the chiropractor tells the unseen person that "you look familiar", the person knocks out the female chiropractor, takes out a machine-operated wire device and decapitates the woman.Several days later, David Parson is driving around Minneapolis and over a local bridge when he sees a gaunt, dark-haired teenager standing on the edge of the bridge, preparing to jump. David stops his pickup truck and helps the seemingly dazed girl back into the street where they get back into his truck and dive away. They drive to a local restaurant where the girl, speaking with a thick European accent, identifies herself as Aura Petrescu from Romania. She refuses to eat, and David suspects that she has a drug problem when he sees needle marks on her arms, and he shows her his that he too was a junkie. After eating a little bit of bread, Aura leaves for the ladies room where she vomits. After sneaking out a back window, she is grabbed by two men who take her away in a car to the home of her parents. Back inside the restaurant, David realizes that Aura has just stolen his wallet.The two men drop off Aura with her weird mother Adriana, while Aura's father, Stefan, locks her in a bedroom. That evening, many business-like people arrive at the house for a séance conducted by Adriana. While trying to summon a soul, Adriana is possessed and mentions a monster with a noose and threatens everyone with more murders to come. Adriana eventually becomes more violent and runs out of the room, followed by her husband. Aura goes after her parents, only to stumble upon a headless body and looks up to see a black-clad killer holding up the severed heads of her mother and father in the pouring rain.After making a phone call, Dr. Judd arrives where he asks Aura about what she saw. Soon, the police, led by Captain Travis, arrive to investigate the killings and question Aura about exactly what she saw. Aura gets away from the police and tracks down David, by using his ID from his stolen wallet, where she tells him about her parents murder and needs a place to stay.Meanwhile, Gabriel, a young boy, apparently lives next door to the killer when he sees an unseen person leave a decapitated head sitting by the window to stare at the boy all night.Later that same night, David awakens to find food laying all over his house and Aura vomiting in the bathroom. The following morning, David, who works as a storyboard sketch artist at a local TV station, arrives for work where he confides in his friend, Arnie, about Aura's problem. Arnie infers that Aura may have anorexia nervosa.The following night, Aura sees David and his reporter girlfriend, Grace, having sex in his bedroom. Disturbed by the sight, Aura runs out of the house, and David is forced to run after her where he's forced to tell Grace about Aura and her problems. The next day, Arnie and David watch a collection of news stories on the recent murders and realized that they all occurred when it was raining. David receives a phone call from Aura who has been taken away. He learns from an apparent covetous Grace that she told Dr. Judd of Aura's whereabouts. David angrily breaks up with Grace and tells her that Aura witnessed the murder of her parents and that the killer may come after her.Meanwhile, Dr. Judd tries to help Aura remember what she may have seen the night her parents were murdered, but he is unsuccessful at extracting any more details. As night falls, David visits the Faraday Clinic where he sneaks in and attempts to find Aura. But the unseen killer has followed him there and forces his way in as well and decapitates one of the clinics doctors. David helps Aura escape and they hide out at his house. Aura reveals that she had stolen a set of keys form the murdered doctor and a key chain as the word 'Marigold' inscribed on it.The next day, David and Aura follow the source of the keys which leads to a local storage locker where they manage to find a photograph of several doctors before the police arrive to confiscate the stuff in the locker which they add up to another murder victim of the so-called Head Hunter. Meanwhile, one of the doctors, named Linda Quick, is telling her girlfriend about the recent murders and that she and the doctors were involved several years ago in an accident involving electro convulsive therapy and something awful. David phones her to ask about the murdered doctors, and Linda immediately hangs up. David and Aura go to visit Linda, but the frightened Linda speeds away in her car. David and Aura drive around looking for her when they finally see the car parked in a motel parking lot. Linda's girlfriend, still at the house, receives a call from Linda and writes down Linda's hotel room number. But the killer arrives and kills Linda's girlfriend and sees from the notepad where Linda is.While David and Aura stake out the motel, the killer arrives, triggers the building sprinkler system (for the rain effect), breaks into Linda's room and beheads her too. David arrives too late to find Linda's decapitated body, but the killer has fled before taking Linda's head with him. The severed head of Linda manages to whisper to David the name "Lloyd" before expiring. David sees and takes a medical bag of Linda's displaying the name St. Bartholomew Hospital.David goes to the hospital, but learns that Dr. Lloyd no longer works here. David finds Dr. Lloyd living on the streets as a junkie drug dealer. Lloyd becomes frightened when David tells him about the recent murders, and refuses to talk with him. David gives Lloyd his phone number and tells him to call if he needs him. Before long, the killer finds Lloyd by tailing him back to a derelict warehouse where Lloyd resides. The killer attacks Lloyd in the same way as with the previous victims by hitting him in the back of the neck with a hammer, and attempts to decapitate Lloyd with the wire device, but the wire snaps. So, the killer is forced to drag Lloyd's still-living, but imobilized body to an elevator shaft and allows a decending elevator car to decapitate Lloyd. Lloyd's severed head falls down the elevator shaft. A little later, the police arrive to investigate the crime scene and discover David's phone number on a note.That night, Dr. Judd arrives at David's house where he tries to persuade Aura to leave with him. David wakes up and a struggle ensures, but Judd runs when the cops arrive to arrest David in connection to Lloyd's murder. Judd speeds away and the police give chase, but his car runs off the road and into a tree. The car truck pops open and inside are all the missing severed heads. Before dying from his injuries, Dr. Judd whispers to a policeman, "I loved her". David is released and runs back to his house to find Aura gone and note declaring "I've gone to join my mother." David finds her nightgown by the lake next to his house and is very distraught thinking that Aura has just drowned herself.With the death of Dr. Judd and the discovery of the severed heads, the Headhunter Murders are considered solved, but David goes into a decline over his loss of Aura. Over the next few days, David resumes his own drug use. Disheartened, he becomes addicted more to prescription drugs. He attempts to feign a prescription, but gets found out and is punched by a pharmacist when he refuses to return the pills. While sitting down on a sidewalk, David sees a person walk by who he believes is wearing Aura's bracelet. David follows the unseen person to a house which is the killer's. Gabriel, standing outside, tells David that he saw someone in a black coat go into the house.David knocks on the front door and says to the unseen person who answers: "Sorry, I thought you were someone else". Believing that he has seen Aura reflected in a rain barrel, David crawls though an open window on the side of the house. He enters a child's room with the name of "Nicholas" written everywhere where he finds a decomposed baby with its severed head in a crib. David is knocked out. He awakens in the basement chained up to a wall with Aura by his side. David soon learns that Aura's mother is still alive.Adriana arrives where she tells David that many years ago, while she was giving birth to her son, her newborn infant was accidentally decapitated by Dr. Lloyd who froze during a blackout in the delivery room during a sudden rainstorm. In an effort to make Adriana forget the horrible accident, and to cover it up, Dr. Lloyd and all the other nurses subjected Adriana to excessive electro-shock therapy. But the process only made Adriana insane and filled with her a resolve to kill all those doctors in the same way her baby was killed. David uses his chains to restrain the gated cage door, and Adriana forces it open with a fireplace poker, in which a support pillar tears open part of the ceiling. Standing above them is Gabriel, who jumps down and uses Adriana's portable wire saw to decapitate Adriana.
    

Trauma


            
                It looks like we don't have a Synopsis for this title yet. Be the first to contribute! Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Synopsis submission guide.
            
    

Christopher Rydell

Christopher Rydell Movies or Tv Shows (upto Nov 2026) - Watch Online

Your region:
USA

Fan Zone

Streaming Availability

Releases by Year

Top Genres

Average IMDB Score