Review: 'The Plague' is an eerie and unsettling drama centering on a kid experiencing the cruelty of teen boys — and deciding whether to fight back or join in
Anyone who has had teen children, or has been a teen child, will recoil with horror and recognition through “The Plague,” a psychological drama that centers on the harms of isolation and peer pressure.
The setting is 2003, at a summer camp for boys learning water polo. The boys learn the basics of what’s often a rough-and-tumble sport, but nothing in the water is as nasty as what the group dynamic of these boys does to a kid who doesn’t fit in.
Ben (Everett Blunck) isn’t that kid, at least not yet. But he’s closer in temperament to the outcast kid in the camp, Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), than to the boys who tease and torment a kid who quotes “The Lord of the Rings” in the sauna when only Ben is around.
The gang of boys, with the constantly smirking Jake (Kayo Martin) as their ringleader, maintain a rumor that Eli has “the plague.” According to Jake’s telling, the plague starts with a skin rash and descends into more terrible symptoms — and any boy who touches Eli has to wash himself off immediately or risk contracting the plague himself.
The boys react to Eli’s presence by scattering like cockroaches in the cafeteria, for fear of being touched. Ben, desperate to be part of the group, joins in this behavior — though he has second thoughts when he actually talks to Eli in the locker room. As Ben starts to befriend Eli, or at least not treat him like a pariah, Jake see a chance to make Ben the next target of the gang’s cruelty.
Writer-director Charlie Polinger, making his feature debut, conjures up a 21st-century variation on “Lord of the Flies,” a situation where boys are given free rein to be who they want to be — and who that is turns out to be horrible little pricks. There’s only one adult in the room here, a coach played by Joel Edgerton, but he’s largely ineffectual when he’s present, which isn’t a lot.
The lads are mostly on their own in “The Plague,” which pumps up the psychological tension without giving us enough details to get past the “kids can be cruel” stereotypes. The camp, we discover early, is a bad place for sensitive boys like Eli, and an even more dangerous place for a kid like Ben, who’s one small push from falling off the fence between prey and predator. But the audience’s investment in where Ben lands is muted by Polinger’s inability to show us more clearly what’s at stake.
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‘The Plague’
★★★
Opens Friday, January 2, in theaters. Rated R for language, sexual material, self-harm/bloody images, and some alcohol and drug use - all involving children. Running time: 98 minutes.