Sonja O’Hara (“Doomsday”) and Sebiye Behtiyar (Preparation for the Next Life) will suffer disturbing physical and psychological transformations in The Scorpion, Deadline reports.
Writer-director Zachary Allard, a development executive at Exile Entertainment, makes his feature debut on the indie horror film.
O’Hara stars Kit, a struggling young woman whose dream of launching her own clothing line has stalled. Desperate for money, she accepts a mysterious job at a cutting-edge cosmetics lab that claims to have eliminated animal testing in favor of willing human participants.
As Kit becomes increasingly entangled in the lab’s bizarre experiments — involving perfumes, chemicals, and invasive procedures — her life begins to improve, even as disturbing physical and psychological changes begin to surface.
Behtiyar co-leads as Lizzie, a winsome new recruit at the experimental cosmetics clinic who forms a deep bond with another test subject as the women endure increasingly disturbing transformations.
Raechel Zarzynski, Kathy Sue Holtorf, Garrett Recker, and Greg Elam will produce, with Corey Moosa (Margin Call) serving as executive producer.
The Scorpion is slated to shoot in Los Angeles later this year.
O’Hara is currently in post-production on the psychological body horror thriller Snare, which she co-directed with Adam Hoelzel.