★★★★½
The Plague opens on a single, quiet, eerie shot underwater. We’re held for a moment beneath the surface of a swimming pool, watching, waiting. Then the surface breaks as several bodies plunge under in slow motion.
Water has a way of feeling sensual and gentle but threatening at the same time, and writer/director Charlie Polinger uses it brilliantly – a sink-or-swim metaphor for everything that follows. Right away, we’re pulled into a tense, suffocating world that constantly teeters on the edge of peril.
Polinger’s debut feature is jittery, unnerving and compelling, with brilliantly executed visual storytelling and raw, unaffected performances.
Set in 2003 at a summer water polo camp in the US, it follows Ben (Everett Blunck), a sweet-natured, sensitive tween who becomes entangled in a cruel game of social hierarchy.
The rules: Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a quiet, awkward kid, has been marked as having ‘the plague’ due to his leprosy-like rash, supposedly contagious. Touch him, and you’re plagued, also outcast.
He’s quite literally a representation of the abnormality phenomenon — the hen with a strange mark, pecked out of the social order. Ben begins to spiral as he’s forced to choose between his own values and the approval of the group and its ringleader, Jake (Kayo Martin).
There’s not much scarier than the awkward, perilous time of our pre-teens, when social approval and the threat of being outcast consume every moment. Polinger takes us there in a way that’s confronting and suffocating, yet strangely compelling.
He creates a pressure cooker in a contained location that tests the limits of social mores against one’s own integrity. The leisure centre is sterile, chlorine-soaked, with eerily empty corridors, sealed tight enough to build a tension you feel like you can’t escape from.
Joel Edgerton plays Coach Daddy Wags as refreshingly flawed and humble, a world-weary dude without the usual US coach bluster. Having experienced bullying in school, Edgerton has a passion for stories that show the ripple effects of persecution, as in his film The Gift (2015).
Polinger’s direction feels unobtrusive, with most of the film centred on the seemingly unattended, lawless boys. There’s a fly-on-the-wall feel, almost like he’s left the cameras rolling while the adults leave the room, making for an uncomfortably real authenticity, with many peep-through-fingers moments.
His script is sparse, leaving space for the actors to swim in subtext, but also peppered with clever moral dilemmas posed as ‘choose A or B’ questions. Where do you fit? What will you stand for, and to what consequence?
In the locker room, Ben is confronted by Eli with a graphic question about what he would do to a dog if no one knew about it. It’s a bold piece of scripting that highlights the moral conflict Ben must grapple with.
Visually, The Plague is absorbing and immersive and a film worthy of awards for cinematography alone. Shot on 35mm, Steven Breckon and Polinger build an exquisitely eerie and claustrophobic atmosphere.
The underwater cinematography is beautifully executed. As Breckon has said: “That’s where the violence is, where the subconscious lives. It became an allegory for adolescence.”
A feeling of peril and unease in the pool scenes spills over into the rest of the film and never fully dissipates. Influenced by Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love, Polinger and Breckon create a similarly suffocating visual language.
There is a terrifyingly visceral scene involving cockroaches and insects under a bedsheet that is the stuff of horror.
Johan Lenox’s score is nightmarish and ‘70s horror-inspired, the sound design intrusive and grating. This is a visceral film. It has you cringe at the blood. Shirk from the eczema. Feel the pool. Smell the chlorine. And question your own values and integrity.
Everett Blunck as Ben is a talent to watch. He has a tricky balance to strike between compassion and the need for approval and plays it with delicate authenticity.
Kayo Martin as Jake is an astounding new talent. He’s charismatic as Ben’s nemesis and suitably hateful, vindictive and infuriating. With a constant smart-ass smirk, he effortlessly challenges Ben and his coach with that familiar wipe-the-grin-off-my-face look we all remember someone having in high school.
Kenny Rasmussen is bold and captivating as Eli, unafraid to go places that make us squirm in shame but also feel real empathy. He shows us the freedom to be gained from being wholly and utterly oneself. To dance outside of the crowd with that sense of wild abandon, without the encumbrance of social demands.
The Plague is about the marks that ‘other’ us, whether they be on the body, or in our perceived flaws and oddities. Nobody wants to be othered, but in some way or other, we’re all set aside at some point.
This is a sharp, uncomfortable study of belonging, groupthink and the cost of integrity that feels timely in a climate where ethics are buried under corruption to sustain a status quo that’s no longer working.
The Plague moves steadily until it grabs you around the throat. There’s a satisfying liberation that comes through, an invitation to let your particular type of crazy loose, no matter the consequences.
THE PLAGUE opens nationally in cinemas from 12 March 2026.
Website: https://rialtodistribution.com/film/the-plague/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/rialtodistributionau/
Watch the trailer here:
Film details:
Title: The Plague
Director: Charlie Polinger
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin
Country of Origin: United States, Romania
Duration: 98 mins
Rating: MA 15+
