Adolescence, and especially at an all-boys summer water polo camp, is hell in Charlie Polinger’s memorably disturbing first feature, “The Plague.” In the psychodrama-meets-body-horror movie, Ben (discovery Everett Blunck), a socially anxious 12-year-old, becomes part of a ritualistic tradition that targets an outcast among them with an illness they call “the plague.”
But as there are real corporeal implications, it’s starting to look as if this imagined social disease might be real. Is the plague in this acne-scarred nightmare an even more horrifying version of puberty? “The Plague” almost feels like an allegory for it, but it’s never predictable. Below, IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer ahead of the film‘s upcoming debut on December 24.
Joel Edgerton also stars in the film as the boys’ coach, who turns out to be extremely out of his depth when faced with the cruelties they inflict upon each other. “The Plague” first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where IndieWire spoke to writer/director Polinger about shooting the film on 35mm during a sweltering summer season. “We were capturing something that felt timeless and, to me, there’s no comparison. It looks so great to shoot on film, and these kids’ faces and closeups just rendered in such a beautiful way,” he said.
That shot-on-film aspect lends to the film feeling like a throwback to classic coming-of-age movies, but with a chilling twist. “I love those movies about boys, though I often feel like a lot of movies about young boys are either a little more sort of bro-y hangout or a little more nostalgic, kind of biking-around-the-suburbs type of thing,” he said. Movies like Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” and Julia Ducournau’s “Raw,” he said, “capture a social dread and vulnerability of your body and something you don’t see as much with boys because it requires a certain vulnerability to be an object of terror in that way… I was even looking at some sort of dread-filled, ‘Shining’ daylight kinds of horror movies, [with] huge imposing spaces.”
From IndieWire’s review out of Cannes: “In his debut feature, filmmaker Charlie Polinger plays with broad riffs on coming-of-age, body horror, and bullying genres before paring these themes back to reveal that two 12-year-old boys — and their contrasting approaches to being different — are really the heartfelt preoccupation of the film.”
Independent Film Company opens “The Plague” in select theaters on Wednesday, December 24 with an expansion to follow on Friday, January 2.