The Reprogrammer — Day 11

Logline:  Zodiac meets The Master

Genre: Drama / Psychological Thriller

Premise: A police detective must stop an evil psychologist who has been building a brainwashed army through his medical practice, and discover whatever terrible purpose they were created for.

Plot: A series of bizarre, seemingly motive-less murders and suicides are on the rise in a normally peaceful suburb of Miami, Florida. The dots go unconnected until Police Detective Martin Cruz realizes that "motive-less" might actually be a pattern itself. After digging deeper he soon uncovers two surprising commonalities in all of the crimes: First, in each case the murderer seems to have been a previously harmless person who stepped outside of their normal life to commit an act of extreme violence, usually culminating in their own suicide. And second, many of the witnesses and survivors reported that the perpetrators behaved as if they were in a trance, or sleepwalking.

As Detective Cruz digs deeper he discovers that ALL of the crimes' perpetrators were recovering amnesiacs, and that all had received treatment in the last few years at the same medical facility, The Marlowe Clinic. The detective decides to pay a visit to Dr. Hargrove Marlowe, a world-renowned therapist in personality disorders who works out of his flagship clinic in an adjacent Miami suburb.

From the moment the cop meets Marlowe, he (and we) know that somehow this man is at the heart of whatever is going on. Marlowe is almost elated to be confronted by the detective, and gleefully explains his cutting-edge treatment with the amnesiacs to Cruz. His job was to "rebuild" them... to help them fill in the blanks and resurrect the person they were, or barring recovery of their memories, help them find the strength to begin from scratch. Though he lacks the evidence, Detective Cruz becomes convinced through the conversation that Marlowe was doing something much more nefarious—essentially reprogramming people with violent impulses in ways that served the doctor's own, mysterious ends. And so a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins.

Soon Cruz ups the ante, confronting Marlowe directly with his suspicions. He tells the doctor that he can round up the dozen or so former amnesiacs he treated, DE-program whatever evil Marlowe has poured into them, and stop Marlowe from doing any more harm. The Doctor simply smiles and asks the detective a hypothetical:  "But what if your claims were true? What if I turned a dozen people into monsters? Now ask yourself, what if 12 were actually 1,200? or 12,000?" 

The detective's mind reels, as he realizes the potential scope of Marlowe's threat. Marlowe is far more than one, well-regarded doctor. Over the past 20 years his clinic has grown into a very popular medical franchise, with hundreds of locations across the United States, all employing the Marlowe Method of Personality Restoration. Marlowe's clinics help "rebuild" and "reintegrate" tens of thousands of traumatized people every year. His clinics deprogram recovering cult members, gang members, criminals of every stripe. They also help the most vulnerable among us: survivors of disaster, assault and rape victims.

"You know, I only stared treating amnesiacs in the last few years. Their challenges are new to me." Offers Marlowe to our detective. "Anytime we expand our practice to a new kind of client, I insist we begin here: at the first Marlowe clinic I ever opened. We trial-run all of our treatments here before we expand them nation-wide." It turns out the only reason Marlowe's evil practices have come to light is because he hasn't been able to perfect the brainwashing of amnesiacs yet. Something about them makes them unstable, and violently implode under their reprogramming.

As the detective frantically scrambles to see the horizon of Marlowe's master plan he wrestles with all the things he doesn't yet know: How big IS Marlowe's brainwashed army? And most importantly, what does Marlowe plan to do with them? Will it be a coordinated, mass terrorist strike? A Jonestown-like suicide, with tens of thousands of people dropping dead nation-wide? Now that Cruz's investigation has lit the fuse, and Marlowe is exposed, the clock is ticking down to something terrible. Can Cruz figure out what Marlowe is up in time to stop his horrible end-game?