Pod (film)

Pod is a 2015 American horror film written and directed by Mickey Keating. It stars Lauren Ashley Carter, Dean Cates, Brian Morvant, Larry Fessenden, and John Weselcouch. Carter and Cates play siblings who stage an intervention for their unstable brother, played by Morvant. As the situation spirals out of control, they begin to wonder if what they had dismissed as their brother's paranoid delusions may be true. Writing was influenced by The Twilight Zone and classic horror films of the 1970s, including the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which inspired the title. Shooting took place in Maine in winter 2014. It premiered at South by Southwest on March 16, 2015, and was released theatrically on August 28, 2015. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 67% approval rating based on six reviews.

After receiving a warning not to come to their family lake house in Maine, siblings Lyla and Ed stage an intervention for their brother, Martin, a dishonorably discharged veteran who believes the military has experimented on him. When they arrive, they find that he has descended into apparent paranoid psychosis and claims to have trapped a monster in the basement. Martin explains that he found a pod while hunting in the woods and believes it to be part of a government conspiracy to create artificial, inanimate assassins. Martin subsequently pulled several of his teeth to find what he believes is a tracking device. However, since he destroyed it, he can not prove it to his siblings. When Ed demands to see what is in the basement, Martin refuses to let him and reveals infected scratches across his torso, which he says were made by the trapped creature.

Ed, a mental health professional, insists they take Martin back to the VA hospital where he was previously institutionalized after attacking a nurse, though Lyla wants to hear more of Martin's side of the story. Martin overhears Lyla and Ed discuss taking him back to the institution and confronts them with a knife. As they try to talk him down, Martin announces that they are all going to die anyway and slices his throat. As Ed attempts to stop the bleeding, Lyla panics. Ed forces her to go downstairs and call for help, but she discovers Martin has cut the phone's cord. Unknown to them, he has also sabotaged their car. After Martin dies from blood loss, Ed kicks open the barricaded basement door. Lyla begs him not to go down, but Ed says he must check if there is an injured person held captive.