Review: The Plague

Official synopsis: A socially awkward tween, Ben (Everett Blunck) endures the ruthless hierarchy at a water polo camp, his anxiety spiraling into psychological turmoil over the summer.

If you're a parent of a t(w)een, mainly a teenage boy, buckle up. Watching a group of kids my son's own age like this in a film made me want to scream. I promise, this film is good! But I wanted to scream.

Kids can be cruel, especially kids like Jake (Kayo Martin) who is a ring leader that no one wants to cross, even if they know piling on Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) is wrong. Eli is already different, he's very much coded as being on the spectrum, but he's also clearly having an eczema flare up and thus gets labeled the titular "plague." 

Ben tries to befriend Eli, he knows what Jake and the other boys are doing is wrong, but his own anxieties start to the best of him. Plus, he's at a sleepaway camp, there's really no one he can go to aside from his coach, Daddy Wags (Joel Edgerton) and who wants to be labeled a snitch?

I thought this film did a great job of showing how those insecurities can manifest in almost a body-horror type way. Because I can't help but think of my own kid, of course I felt way too deeply about everything and wanted to micromanage all their problems, but this is life. The child actors are all brilliant. Blunck, Martin, and Rasmussen have a lot to carry with their characters and they do a great job. Edgerton isn't in it as much, but he's a welcomed presence when he's on screen.

There's also some stunning underwater camera work that I really liked. This is director Charlie Polinger's first feature and you can tell he put a lot of work into framing those scenes. It paid off well.

Grade: B