The Protégé

Based on actual events...

In 1970, Chloe Sinclair, the fictional daughter of real-life serial killer Angus Sinclair (The World's End Killer) was abandoned at Willowbrook State School a real, now closed state-supported institution on Staten Island, New York. Willowbrook State School opened in 1948 as the world's largest institution for treating people with cognitive and developmental disabilities while separating them from the mainstream of society until it closed in 1987.

Due to Chloe's abandonment, Willowbrook staff took her in and assumed her parents wanted to get rid of her due to a disability; however, she was misdiagnosed and was actually a very gifted child.

1972, Geraldo Rivera, then an investigative reporter for WABC-TV in New York, conducted a series of secret investigations at Willowbrook [The Last Disgrace], uncovering a host of deplorable conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate sanitary facilities, and physical and sexual abuse of residents by members of the Willowbrook staff including psychologist and psychiatrist. Psychiatrists would testify during competency hearings and have competent children, teens, and adults remanded into their care indefinitely while getting funded by the State.

Chloe Sinclair survived Willowbrook until it closed in 1987. She went to college, graduate school and obtained two doctorate degrees in Forensics and Abnormal Psychology. Although brilliant, Chloe's traumatic upbringing at Willowbrook has taken its toll. Dr. Sinclair believes that if her clients cannot overcome their mental health issues and become self-sufficient like she had to, then her form of "exposure therapy" will resolve their mental health issues forever. Dr. Sinclair's clients are killed based on their mental health disorders!

Dr. Sinclair manipulates and grooms a few of her special "delinquent" clients, e.g., Protégés to become her minions of murder. The murders are live-streamed back to Dr. Sinclair in "real-time" as Dr. Sinclair gets sexually aroused by the killings (as most serial killers do). Throughout the film, law enforcement, led by Detective Chase Mason, is misdirected as the Protégés plant old evidence at the new crime scenes from missing or dead former staff members of Willowbrook that Sinclair has killed over the past three decades.

Can the authorities and the audience figure out who is killing Dr. Sinclair's clients? Is it a student, faculty, a past client, or will her diabolical and masterful plan allow her to keep on killing over and over and over again?

This gripping and powerful piece brings awareness to mental health issues in a highly macabre way! The scene is now set for one of the most extraordinary psychological horror thrillers in recent history that will leave movie-goers spellbound by its creativity, suspense, engaging characters, and compelling race-against-the-clock narrative!