The Plague Review: Boys Will Be Brutal

It’s been a while since I’ve felt a true personal connection to a film, but The Plague dredged up old memories of summer sleepaway camp as a pre-teen and the agonizing feelings of trying to measure up in a group when you haven’t even figured out who you are inside. We make so many mistakes growing up, and it always seems to come to a head when we have the least amount of resources to draw from. Not that we would have asked for help. Not that we would have known what to ask. In that regard, watching the physical bullying and psychological ostracization in writer/director Charlie Polinger‘s debut is white-knuckle stuff, the kind that makes long-since healed emotional scars start to tingle.

Ben (Everett Blunck, Griffin in Summer) arrives at an all-boys water polo camp for the second session—and is there any greater horror than joining when friend groups have already formed? There’s really only one group that matters, led by the smirking Jake (Kayo Martin), and one outcast: Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a smart but awkward kid whose introverted manner and skin condition have earned him a cruel nickname. He has “The Plague,” they say. Touch him and you’ll catch it.

Polinger stages the film like a Lord of the Flies situation, with adult presence almost nonexistent outside pool time. Joel Edgerton (also a producer) plays the coach, and his character—inexplicably named “Daddy Wags”—is kind but ineffectual, too focused on safety basics to notice the social carnage unfolding in the dorms. The boys are alone, and that’s when the “kids will be kids” behavior starts to draw blood.

Blunck delivers another strong performance after his unforgettable work in Griffin in Summer (please, seek that one out ASAP) as Ben navigates that impossible terrain between doing what’s right and figuring out what that even means. A lot of what happens to him is caused by not being himself; once he learns that lesson, his world shifts. Martin is equally impressive as Jake, nailing the too-cool menace of a kid who doesn’t need to be bigger or stronger because he’s already figured out how to find weak points and exploit them. He doesn’t unleash putdowns so much as repeat back an awkward answer and let his victim twist. Rasmussen, in his feature debut, brings heartbreaking vulnerability to Eli—the most tragic element being that even he seems to believe something is genuinely wrong with him.

Steven Breckon‘s 35mm cinematography uses haunting underwater photography to capture the quiet frenzy beneath the surface: kicking legs, agitated bubbles, boys learning to sink or swim with nothing to stand on. Johan Lenox‘s score sets an appropriately unsettling mood without overselling the dread. And with the Oscar for casting finally becoming a reality for 2025 releases, it’s worth noting Rebecca Dealy‘s work here—the same casting director behind Hereditary and Midsommar assembled exactly the right cadre of young men to form this particular ecosystem of cruelty.

Polinger drew from his own childhood journals to write the script, and that specificity shows. This isn’t nostalgic coming-of-age territory; it’s psychological horror rooted in the way twelve-year-old boys crave acceptance so badly they’ll betray their own conscience to get it. The Plague is no easy watch, no matter where you stood on the food chain growing up. But it’s an important one, with strong performances and a writer/director who understands the balance between cruelty and complexity. We’re always told to stick up for those who can’t stick up for themselves—but who sticks up for us in return?