Movie Review: The Plague

I am not going to say that adolescence is especially “easy” for anyone. It’s a volatile stretch of life, a period when our bodies change faster than our ability to understand them and when social hierarchies begin to calcify in ways that feel both arbitrary and brutally consequential. Sure, if you happen to fall in with the popular crowd you’ll likely have a better time weathering this period, but not everyone can, and for those of us who don’t the stress of the experience can border on the horrific. Writer / director Charlie Polinger fully understands that feeling and channels it with unnerving precision in his tense and absorbing feature debut, The Plague.

Twelve-year-old Ben (Everett Blunck) has been forced to move to a new city following his parents’ divorce and struggles to make friends. To remedy that he is enrolled into a water polo camp, where his quiet, observant demeanor makes him an uneasy fit. Nevertheless, he does manage to insinuate himself into the popular clique, led by the casually cruel Jake (Kayo Martin). His cautious acceptance by the boys is perhaps aided by the fact that another boy is already the primary target of their ire, the slightly overweight and possibly neurodivergent Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), whose situation is made worse by a visible fungal infection on his skin that the group half-jokingly refers to as “the plague”.

Ben goes along with the cruelty, possibly even partially believing it to be true, but he is uneasy about doing so. Soon enough, his moral compass leads him to feel that Jake and the others are being needlessly and excessively mean and he reaches out to Eli. Of course, his act of kindness does not go unpunished and he quickly finds himself out of Jake and Co.’s good graces. He is not quite as taciturn about it as Eli however and tries to remedy the situation, with each attempt only making the abuse grow worse and potentially more dangerous, all while their instructor (Joel Edgerton) seems frustratingly powerless to intercede.

The young ensemble is spectacular. The scenes in which they are goofing off and having a good time feel real and will flash many viewers back to the same time period in their own lives. Likewise, the jockeying for position and the bullying it inspires will strike a nerve. Blunck gives a nuanced and deeply emotional performance that easily engenders empathy from the audience. Rasmussen’s lonely and weird Eli is equally sympathetic, even if we sometimes cringe at his behavior, realizing that he will not have an easy life ahead. Martin’s Jake though may be one of the most chilling villains of the year, easily switching between confidently charismatic and coldly calculating, exuding menace while still retaining an air of childlike innocence. Many of us have known a Jake, and Martin captures that type with unsettling accuracy.

Cinematographer Steven Breckon captures some truly stunning images, especially when filming underwater, while his framing of the camp’s long, sterile hallways amplifies the film’s creeping dread. Johan Lenox’s score, an eerie blending of Goblin’s work for Suspiria and the interstitial music from Glee, deepens the sense of unease. By heightening the experiences and problems of youth to horror-movie levels, Polinger has crafted one of the most relentlessly tense and memorably tragic movies of 2025.

Even into adulthood many still struggle with self-acceptance, and it’s a battle that begins at this young stage in life, long before we have the tools to navigate it. Platitudes like “just be yourself” may be well-intentioned and even accurate, but particularly in our youth they provide little or no practical help. The Plague will linger with viewers, leaving them wondering what can be done to fix the problem, while also acknowledging that there may not be an answer. ★★★★★