In the unsettling psychological horror film "Excision," directed by Richard Bates Jr., a disturbingly ambitious high school senior named Pauline, played by AnnaLynne McCord, navigates the treacherous waters of adolescence with a singular, macabre obsession: becoming a surgeon. Estranged from her overbearing and religious mother, portrayed by Traci Lords, and ignored by her popular sister, Pauline retreats into a vivid and grotesque fantasy life where she performs graphic surgical procedures. Her waking hours are a battlefield of social rejection, academic pressure, and a desperate yearning for control, all of which fuel her increasingly violent daydreams. As she applies to medical school, her grip on reality begins to fray, blurring the lines between her surgical fantasies and the world around her. Featuring a memorable supporting cast including Malcolm McDowell as a blunt guidance counselor and Marlee Matlin as her concerned mother, the film is a visceral and darkly comic exploration of alienation, body horror, and the terrifying consequences of a mind pushed to its breaking point.