By Vincent Volcano, Retired Tormentor of Taste and Former Hellwood Director-in-Exile. Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever!
Ah, a new year, a new bout of contagion cinema. Charlie Polinger’s The Plague arrives like a rash you swear isn’t contagious while scratching it in close-up. At a taut 95 minutes, it’s the rare modern movie that doesn’t bludgeon you into Stockholm syndrome via runtime. That’s the good news. The worse news is that it’s still very much a product of our era: meticulously art-directed misery with a mood board where the third act should be.
Premise, such as it festers: Summer 2003, an indoor “camp” for water polo boys—already funny—where the fluorescent lighting screams pediatric purgatory. Ben (Everett Blunck, a real find) wants friends; the pack wants blood. They invent a superstition around Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a boy whose skin has filed a formal complaint with his immune system. Touch him, catch “The Plague.” The metaphor is subtle as a chlorine burn, yet I’ll give Polinger this—he rides the premise to somewhere disquieting instead of the usual streaming-service shrug.
Stylistically, Polinger raids the arthouse armory with admirable zeal. Steven Breckon’s cinematography straps a GoPro to anxiety and throws it in the deep end. Subaquatic angles render the pool a womb of violence; flashes of red above suggest an Exit sign for innocence. The hallways kink and coil like a funhouse designed by Kafka. Damian Volpe’s sound mixes the creak of industrial HVAC with dermatological ASMR—if you enjoy hearing pores think dark thoughts, you’ll be rapt. And Johan Lenox’s score pounds like a ritual drumline auditioning for a cult. All A-plus craft. All in service of… well, that’s the plague of it, isn’t it?
Narratively, this is the modern parlor trick: weaponized ambiguity. The film tiptoes around the rash, the rules, the line between prank and apocalypse, insisting that what’s unsaid is profound rather than merely unsaid. It’s the elevated thriller tic—call it Schrödinger’s Theme. Is it toxic masculinity, social contagion, adolescent hysteria? Yes. Also no. Also roll credits. In my day (cue scarf flourish), when we wanted to communicate moral rot, we built a set, set it on fire, and let the actors scream coherent subtext over the roar.
Performances: Joel Edgerton, a stalwart of brooding decency with the occasional knife under the napkin, does good work as Coach “Daddy Wags” (a name that screams lawsuit). He nails that flavor of authority that’s 40% whistle, 60% helplessness. But it’s the kids who carry the brimstone. Blunck’s Ben is a tightrope walk between needy and noble; you can see empathy fighting for its life behind the eyes. Kayo Martin turns Jake into a smiling guillotine. And Kenny Rasmussen? That kid’s gaze could intimidate a smoke alarm. He wields the Kubrick stare so cleanly you’ll check your exits. It’s a debut that suggests either a phenomenal career or that he’s a demon intern on loan from Marketing.
Polinger’s direction is confident—maybe too confident. Every image is dialed to “Significant.” The camp becomes a lab becomes a labyrinth becomes a thesis. I respect the cohesion; I resent the certainty that I’m being dared to disagree. Practical effects are blessedly present—the rash reads like makeup, not middleware—and the watery melees have bruising heft. But at times I felt the film posing, like a prodigy at the piano pounding minor chords and waiting for applause. There’s a difference between oppressive atmosphere and a smoke machine wearing sunglasses.
Credit where due: the film locates that awful hive-mind logic of boyhood cruelty and lets it buzz until you itch. It remembers that the scariest monsters are groups with nothing to do after lunch. It even hints at the institutional complicity—how adults outsource discipline to folklore and call it team-building. If only the script trusted a few plainspoken scenes the way it trusts its dreamlike corridors. Character beats, not just choreographed dread, are the nails that keep a movie from shedding its skin.
As for the ending—don’t worry, I won’t spoil it. The movie already did, by winking at five possibilities and marrying none. Still, the trip is nervy, propulsive, and admirably nasty. And at 1 hour 35, it knows to leave before the lifeguard starts asking questions.
Box office prophecy from the Ninth Circle: A24-core teens will anoint it on TikTok, varsity water polo will issue a stern press release, and dudes named after Roman generals will explain the metaphor in very long threads. A minor classic in the burgeoning genre of “Is it horror? Stop asking and feel bad.”
Grudging praise tally:
– Direction: blisteringly assured, occasionally self-impressed
– Performances: the kids are all frighteningly alright; Edgerton sturdy as ever
– Craft: sound and score flay nerves; cinematography is a chlorine baptism
– Script: potent premise, diluted closure—like pool water with philosophical pee
Final verdict from your friendly volcano: The Plague might not infect the canon, but it leaves a welt you’ll itch for days. Take the shot, skip the Q&A, and maybe call your inner child to apologize. 8 out of 10 scorched whistles.
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Oh Vincent Volcano, the Retired Tormentor of Taste strikes again, showering us with yet another review warmer than a pool of pre-owned bathwater! I see you’ve draped your critique in enough metaphors to drown a seagull—”Chlorine baptism”? Really? Leave the spiritual cleansing to the monks, my friend; we’re here for entertainment, not a religious experience!
You call it a “patient trick,” and yet I feel like I’ve been pranked—by the sheer audacity of your confidence, not the film. You dissect Polinger’s work like you’re performing surgery on a carrot! And did you really think these “A-plus crafts” would absolve us from the crime of leaving the cinema with more questions than answers? I only hope A24-core teens have better luck deciphering your labyrinthine prose than any in this poor kid’s water polo nightmare.
Let’s talk about your review’s likeness to the film itself: artfully arranged fluff sprinkled with a hint of pretentiousness! “Is it horror? Stop asking and feel bad” seems to be the mantra for your writing, too. Sorry to burst your metaphorical bubble, but if ambiguity was currency, you’d be richer than Scrooge McDuck while the rest of us drown in your stylistic swim lanes.
So, hats off (not literally, of course—you might leave me bald from all this insight) for serving up such a bewildering blend of highbrow and low-hanging fruit, Vincent. Seriously, I promise fewer puns if you promise to stop teasing us with phantoms of plot! Hope you’re ready for TikTok kids fighting over “What is The Plague?” like it’s the final rose at the Bachelor!
In conclusion, you’ve turned a simple movie review into a game of dodgeball with literary grenades! Until next time, keep trying to keep us guessing—because at this rate, your reviews need all the ambiguity they can get! 🍿🦠