Body horror fans will want to contract this ‘Plague’
There are few torments more agonizing than being bullied simply because you are considered odd. I speak from experience, having been subjected to almost daily beatings by a group of roughnecks from the local boys’ home. I was 13 at the time, a seventh-grader with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder, practically making me a sitting duck for my abusers. I hated them with a passion, yet, in some bizarre way, I longed to be their friend. Makes no sense, right?
It’s this paradox that instantly drew me into Charlie Polinger’s first feature, “The Plague,” a semiautobiographical account of being bullied by his peers at a summer sports camp in 2003. I found it unexpectedly cathartic, particularly the writer-director’s deft exploration of the theory that 12- and 13-year-old boys inflict such cruelty, not out of spite, but to cover up their own deep-seated insecurities. In the case of my attackers, they were boys whose parents had abandoned them for various reasons.
Looking back, they had every reason to be angry and understandably felt compelled to counter their damaged self-esteem by ferreting out the weakest guy in the room and exerting their will. It gave them a warped sense of power that was utterly lacking in their home lives. But it’s more than that, as Polinger asserts, through characters caught between a yet-to-be-realized capacity for compassion and an intense desire to be socially accepted by their peers.
That moral ambiguity perfectly personifies his surrogate, Ben (Everett Blunck), a new arrival from Boston. It’s immediately evident to Ben that he talks, eats and thinks differently from his fellow attendees at a summer water polo camp. So, he goes out of his way attempting to be like “them,” and not like Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), the “weirdo” with an unsightly rash the other campers have deemed the plague. If you accidentally touch Eli in or out of the pool, you’re expected to scrub down as if you’d been exposed to radiation, even though you know it’s all a malicious stunt.
The guys, led by the charismatic but unscrupulous Jake (amazing newcomer Kayo Martin), think their ostracism of Eli is harmless amusement and a means of building unity at the expense of the child who is unlike them. At first, Ben goes along to get along. Yet, he’s intrigued by Eli and yearns to understand why the kid seems to work at being an oddball. He’s also curious about all those sores on Eli’s face, legs and back.
Blunck, the breakout star from 2024’s “Griffin in Summer,” is adept at conveying Ben’s crisis of conscience in choosing between what’s morally right and what’s best for his social status. Like Blunck, Ben is a bit awkward, as so many kids at the cusp of puberty are. He’s tall and gangly. And he’s aware he could easily be a target for persecution if he didn’t diligently seek acceptance into the camp’s chief clique dominated by Martin’s Jake.
Although Martin has never acted before, the budding Olympian in skateboarding and boxing is a natural. With his tousled mop of dirty-blond curls and slightly sinister smirk, he projects a commanding presence. You grow to love to hate Jake and his passive-aggressive MO, always using words, never fists, to discreetly belittle his prey, particularly Eli, whom he pronounces an untouchable. At first, Ben complies. But empathy emerges to the level where, when Ben witnesses Eli struggling to rub skin cream on his zit-covered back, he offers a hand.
It’s a kind act, albeit somewhat off-putting, but perfectly in keeping with Polinger’s leanings toward the body-horror genre. Drawing inspiration from such puberty-is-worse-than-death classics as “Carrie,” “Black Swan,” and “Eighth Grade,” Polinger cleverly probes many of the same themes, but from a male perspective. And what’s most revealing is that boys can be even more catty than girls.
So, where’s the adult supervision? At first, I was a bit dubious of their coach (Joel Edgerton of “Train Dreams”) being so clueless about what’s going on in the lunchroom and after lights-out. But then, I remembered how totally oblivious my teachers were when I was being pounded every day before class.
Like me, Ben is pretty much on his own in this “Lord of the Flies” social structure, and it’s his growing defiance of Jake’s “laws” that elevates the tension as Ben continues to wrestle with his conscience. And the three leads are never less than compelling.
The fine acting is heightened by the equally skilled camera work by Steven Breckon, both above and below water. He works in a style reminiscent of those great cerebral fright films of the 1970s, like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Don’t Look Now.” That and Johan Lenox’s eerie score create a constant palpable sense of dread. And, believe me, there will be blood. Lots of it. And a severed finger or two.
This is adolescence, after all! Terrifying stuff, if not downright deadly. C’mon, what’s more frightening than being a teenager? I get the shivers just thinking back to those awful years when being a kid was a living, breathing nightmare.
Movie review
The Plague
Rated: R for some drug and alcohol use, language, sexual material, self-harm and bloody images
Cast: Everett Blunck, Joel Edgerton, Kayo Martin and Kenny Rasmussen
Director: Charlie Polinger
Writer: Charlie Polinger
Runtime: 98 minutes
Where: In theaters Dec. 24 (limited), expanding Jan. 2
Grade: B
