Trauma is a 1993 giallo horror film directed by Dario Argento and starring Asia Argento, Christopher Rydell, Piper Laurie, and Frederic Forrest.
It was one of two films Argento directed in the United States outside of his native Italy, the other being the 1990 anthology film Two Evil Eyes.
Plot[]
Aura Petrescu (Asia Argento), a young woman suffering from anorexia, escapes from a psychiatric hospital and meets a young man, David Parsons (Christopher Rydell), who offers to let her stay with him rather than go back to the hospital; however, Aura is soon caught, and her return to the hospital coincides with the start of a string of murders of hospital staff members, past and present. The killer decapitates them using a homemade garrote device on rainy days. When her father Stefan, is murdered along with her mother, Aura and David team up to find the killer.
In the end, it is revealed that Aura's mother, Adriana, who faked her death after murdering her husband, is the killer. Years earlier, Dr. Lloyd (Brad Dourif) was given the task of delivering Aura's brother, Nicolas. However, his clumsiness combined with a power outage (caused by a thunderstorm) led to him slicing off the newborn infant's head as he was being delivered. The head nurse during the delivery convinces the doctor to forcibly subject Adriana to electroshock treatment against her will, hoping that it would erase all memory of the botched delivery/death of her son, allowing for the staff to cover up their causing her child's death. Holding the two hostage, Adriana is ultimately killed by a young child who had discovered the mother's crimes, and ultimately uses her own murder device against her to save her captives.