Social acceptance clashes with moral code in this perturbing pre-teen genre affair from Charlie Polinger
In The Plague, filmmaker Charlie Polinger delivers a tense and haunting debut that blends coming-of-age drama with the creeping dread of psychological horror. Taking place in the summer of ’03 at a boys’ water polo camp, where adolescence collides with fear, social politics, and a mysterious affliction known only as “the plague.”
12-year-old Ben (Everett Blunck, with an impressively nuanced performance) arrives at the camp fresh from a family upheaval in Boston. New to the group and fragile from his parents’ divorce, Ben finds himself navigating the brutal currents of pre-teen hierarchy and ritual. After a round of light hazing, he’s welcomed into the team, led by the confident and quietly commanding Jake (Kayo Martin). But it’s not long before Ben learns of a strange sickness afflicting one of the campers, Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), an awkward, socially outcast boy whose behavior unnerves the group.
The lore of this “disease” tells of how it starts with a rash, one that spreads across the body, eventually leading to a of motor control and emotional outbursts. Whether you deem it to be either literal and metaphorical, it echoes puberty, trauma, and the terrifying sense of being “different” that looms large in adolescence. Eli, who may be neurodivergent and clearly suffers from deeper emotional scars, becomes the focal point of the boys’ fear and scorn. But Ben’s own quiet empathy draws him toward Eli, in a relationship that becomes the film’s emotional crux. A young boy, keen to remain in good social standing with the other boys at this camp, who through his own moral code, might find himself breaking from the pack and experiencing his own form of quarantine.
Visually, The Plague is stunning. Shot on textured 35mm by cinematographer Steven Breckon, the film leans into its environment with brooding precision, pale blue pools, grey buildings, and stark landscapes creating an eerie, suspenseful atmosphere. Underwater shots are particularly evocative, with muffled sounds, frantic movements, and inverted, disorienting images mirroring plunges into the subconscious. Sound design by Damian Volpe, paired with Johan Lenox’s jarring electronic score, drenches the film in paranoia and discomfort, channeling the erratic internal rhythms of pre-teen confusion and fear.
What stands out most, beyond the craft, is the film’s emotional resonance. It never fully embraces horror, but it mines real dread, the kind that lives in memory. The sense of unease stems not just from the camp’s folklore or the plague itself, but from the way the boys interact, talking over each other, jockeying for status, leveraging cruelty as a social tool. It’s intense, feverish, and all too real. In this pressure-cooker of masculinity and unresolved trauma, the real affliction might be the toxic code these boys are forced to live by. What makes the film all the more poignant is the fact that is more than unites these kids than divides them. Each having been deposited at this camp by their families for their own reasons.
Blunck gives a standout performance, as Ben wrestles with his conscience, his desire to belong, and his increasing discomfort with the group’s treatment of Eli. Martin is equally strong, portraying Jake with the kind of cool command (and cruelty) that hints at early leadership. Rasmussen, as Eli, imbues his character with heartbreaking vulnerability, making his outsider status painfully clear. Producer Joel Edgerton appears in a brief but telling role as the team’s coach, a man clearly out of his depth (no pun intended), unaware of the psychological fault lines fracturing his young team. His inability to offer real guidance or even notice the deepening crisis only heightens the sense of isolation and unsupervised volatility.
The Plague is a sharp, unnerving debut that captures the fear, cruelty, and heartbreak of adolescence with rare honesty. Gorgeously shot and deeply felt, Pollinger’s direction (and screenplay) skillfully frames genre elements to build atmosphere without relying on tropes. The Plague is more than just a tale of summer misadventure, it transforms into a cautionary tale, a parable about the cost of cruelty and the thin line between childhood and something much darker.
