Protocol

Protocol follows a woman who signs up for a clinical retreat with an unusual pitch: no therapy, no spirituality, just rigorous behavioral regulation designed to eliminate anxiety for good. The program works, or seems to, as she becomes calmer, more compliant, more functional than she's ever been.

But the retreat's methods ask for more compliance than they first let on, and as the story tightens around her, the line between treatment and control starts to blur. L. Wynn's short psychological horror story is a quiet, unsettling look at what gets sacrificed in the pursuit of "functioning well."