THE BROOD

Dr. Hal Raglan, a psychotherapist, encourages patients with mental disturbances to let go of their suppressed emotions through physiological changes to their bodies in a technique he calls "psychoplasmics". One of his patients is Nola Carveth, a severely disturbed woman who is legally embattled with her husband Frank for custody of their five-year-old daughter Candice. When Frank discovers bruises and scratches on Candice following a visit with Nola, he informs Raglan of his intent to stop visitation rights. Wanting to protect his patient, Raglan begins to intensify the sessions with Nola to resolve the issue quickly. During the therapy sessions, he discovers that Nola was abused by her alcoholic mother, Juliana, while neglected by her father Barton, who refused to protect Nola out of shame and denial.

Frank, intending to invalidate Raglan's methods, questions Jan Hartog, a former patient who is dying of psychoplasmic-induced lymphoma. He leaves Candice with Juliana and the two spend the evening viewing old photographs. Juliana tells Candice that Nola was frequently hospitalized as a child and often exhibited strange unexplained wheals on her skin that doctors were unable to diagnose. While in the kitchen, Juliana is attacked and bludgeoned to death by a small, dwarf-like child. Candice is traumatized, but physically unharmed.

Juliana's ex-husband Barton returns for the funeral and attempts to contact Nola, but Raglan turns him away. Frank invites Candice's teacher, Ruth Mayer, home for dinner to discuss his daughter's performance in school. Barton interrupts with a drunken phone call from Juliana's home, demanding that Frank and he go to Raglan's institute to see Nola. Frank leaves to calm Barton, leaving Candice in Ruth's care. While he is away, Ruth answers a phone call from Nola, who, recognizing her voice and believing her to be having an affair with Frank, insults her and angrily warns Ruth to stay away from her family. Meanwhile, Frank arrives to find Barton murdered by the same deformed dwarf-child, who dies after attempting to kill Frank.

An autopsy of the dwarf-child reveals a multitude of bizarre anatomical anomalies, primarily the absence of a navel, indicating no known means of natural human birth. After the murders catch the attention of newspapers, Raglan reluctantly acknowledges that the deaths coincided with his sessions with Nola relating to their respective topics. He closes his institute and sends his patients to municipal care with the exception of Nola. Frank is alerted about the closure of the institute by Hartog.

Mike Trellan, one of Raglan's other patients, tells Frank that Nola is now Raglan's "queen bee" and in charge of some "disturbed children" in an attic. When Candice returns to school, two dwarf-children attack and kill Ruth in front of her class before absconding with Candice to the institute, with Frank in pursuit. Upon arrival, Raglan tells Frank the truth about the dwarf-children: they are the accidental product of Nola's psychoplasmic sessions; her rage about her abuse was so strong that she parthenogenetically bore a brood of creatures resembling children who psychically respond and act on the targets of her rage, with Nola completely unaware of their actions. Realizing the brood are too dangerous to keep anymore, Raglan plans to venture into their quarters and rescue Candice, provided that Frank can keep Nola calm to avoid provoking the children.

Frank feigns rapprochement long enough for Raglan to collect Candice, but when he witnesses Nola give birth to another child through a psychoplasmically-induced external womb, she notices his disgust when she licks the child clean. The brood awakens and kills Raglan. Nola then threatens to kill Candice rather than lose her. The brood goes after Candice, who hides in a closet, but they begin to break through the door and try to grab her. In desperation, Frank strangles Nola to death, and the brood dies without its mother's psychic connection. Frank carries a traumatized Candice back to his car and the two depart. As the pair sit in silence, two small lesions—a germinal stage of the phenomenon experienced by Nola—appear on Candice's arm.

Frank confronts Nola at Somafree Institute, discovering that her rage has physically manifested as a brood of mutant children responsible for the murders. He kills Nola, ending the immediate threat, but Candice is shown with similar welts, suggesting the cycle may continue.

The ending ties the film’s psychological horror directly to the physical world, showing that Nola’s emotional trauma becomes literal monsters. Frank’s act of killing Nola stops the brood, but Candice’s marks imply that trauma and its monstrous consequences can be inherited, leaving viewers unsettled and the horror unresolved.