A socially awkward boy at a summer water polo camp faces stigmatisation and arbitrary inclusion/exclusion by his peers in this formally assured feature debut, marked by a haunting sound design and body horror that depict bullying as not merely social or pathological but psychosomatic.
Review #3,074
Dir. Charlie Polinger
2025 | USA | Drama, Horror | 98min | 2.39:1 | English
Not rated – likely to be M18 for language, sexual material, self-harm/bloody images, and some drug and alcohol use – all involving children
Cast: Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Joel Edgerton, Kenny Rasmussen, Lucas Adler
Plot: A socially awkward tween endures the ruthless hierarchy at a water polo camp, his anxiety spiraling into psychological turmoil over the summer.
Awards: Nom. for Un Certain Regard Award & Camera d’Or (Cannes)
International Sales: AGC International
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Slightly Dark/Mature: Teen Bullying; Psychological Torment; Power & Submission
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Twelve-year-olds are largely innocuous, but in The Plague, they become walking trigger warnings. Beware of these misbehaving kids, whose collective aim is to intimidate, insult, and harm their peers—for reasons that remain opaque, beyond a devilish enjoyment of cruelty.
In his debut feature, director Charlie Polinger tackles the perennial, notoriously unexamined issue of chronic school bullying. It’s a disease that has scarred countless teenagers and, in some cases, cost lives.
I was shoved around and called the most appalling names by a group of gangster-ish older girls during co-curricular activities in secondary school—an ordeal that lasted once a week for about a year, until I was streamed into a top academic class. Perhaps it stopped being fun to target someone perceived as intellectually ‘above’ them.
Still, the memory lingers, ready to surface when least expected. Words can wound long after the fact—as they likely will for Ben (Everett Blunck, in a fantastic performance), even decades later.
At a summer water polo camp, Ben is socially awkward but eager to belong. He manages, briefly, to find footing, only to realise that power is dictated by a rigid hierarchy—one that no one can supersede.
“You wanna know a secret? We’re all different.”
At the top sits the chief bully, Jake (Kayo Martin, all sadistic smirks), who maintains control through subservience, intimidation, and the rumour mill. The titular ‘plague’ is an invented affliction, arbitrarily deployed to include or exclude, to stigmatise and isolate.
Polinger’s film is especially striking in its use of sound, a haunting, dissonant design that draws us into a nightmarish world. Tracking shots—with clear nods to The Shining (1980)—heighten the pervasive unease.
Most compelling, perhaps, is the suggestion that bullying is not merely social or pathological, but psychosomatic (rendered here in expressive, almost allegorical terms), where emotional distress manifests physically in the form of rashes and symptoms that mark the body. The result is a vicious, inescapable cycle—one is accused of carrying a ‘disease’ that is, in effect, produced by the accuser.
One might describe The Plague as body horror meets Lord of the Flies, though that risks implying the absence of adults. They are present but largely ineffectual. Joel Edgerton appears as a coach who believes bullying is something one simply outgrows, as he did. But go ask Ben whether he can imagine a meaningful future when his present is a perpetual living hell.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 