by Erin Free
Worth: $18.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Everett Blunck, Kenny Rasmussen, Kayo Martin, Joel Edgerton
Intro:
The Plague is in many ways a quietly extraordinary film, exploding massive cultural issues with composed grace.
Kids can be fucking arseholes, end of story. Always thrown together in groups (school, sport, public transport), they seem to have a bizarre knack for inflicting new types of physical and emotional pain on each other, not even with the specific intent to cause pain and harm, but just, you know, for something to do. Though teen bullying can obviously be laser-like in its precision and focus, it can also be strikingly casual, with vile words and vicious put-downs hurled around with little thought or care for their potential lasting impact.
This is the world of The Plague, a beautifully made and cogently written teen drama inventively cloaked in horror movie tropes by talented debutante Charlie Polinger. Set in 2003 (the bullying here has a distinctly analogue feel to it) at a water polo summer camp, the moody, atmospheric drama focuses on sensitive, thoughtful, thirteen-year-old new kid Ben (Everett Blunck), who is instantly struck by his colleagues’ treatment of the odd Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), who would now obviously be categorised as being “on the spectrum.” On top of his curious behaviour, Eli is also stricken by a rash-like skin condition, which the quietly cruel Jake (Kayo Martin) and his cronies have coldly reconfigured as “the plague”, a highly contagious, brain-rotting disease.
Though initially thought to just be typical teenaged bullfuckery designed principally as a tool to further ostracise a sneered-at outsider, when Ben starts to develop a rash of his own (or does he?) after getting too close to Eli, the troubled teen is soon targeted too, which leads to intensifying levels of cruelty. Though the boys’ nice guy coach (Joel Edgerton) tries hard to arrest their behaviour and provide a kindly ear for Ben, he’s largely ineffectual in the face of the horribly inventive Jake, who you could probably classify as a teen psychopath…if he actually seemed to care about anything he’s doing.
While obviously set rigidly within the highly sexualised, casually profane, and wholly puerile world of twelve and thirteen-year-old boys (it’s Good Boys replayed as Grand Guignol), The Plague shares more than a few similarities with the first half of Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War epic Full Metal Jacket. It’s not just there in the film’s highly formalised visual style and poetic images, but also in its characterisations, with sympathetic Ben the Private Joker to Eli’s marginalised, bullied “other”, Gomer Pyle, while an adult figure (a much kinder one in The Plague, thankfully) is unable to make a difference despite his position of authority. Both films end in bloodshed, but of wholly varied degrees.
A real slow-burn that creates moments of genuine terror, The Plague is in many ways a quietly extraordinary film, exploding massive cultural issues with composed grace. It’s beautifully scripted and shot, but the real strength of the film is its performances. Everett Blunck bounces across all points of the emotional map as Ben, Joel Edgerton is believable at every turn as a nice guy in over his head, and Kenny Rasmussen is compelling and confounding as Eli. The real scene-stealer, however, is Kayo Martin, a skateboarder, boxer and internet prankster who turns actor here to absolutely devastating effect, making bullying Ben a figure of sheer terror while never resorting to theatrics; he’s purely, utterly real, which makes him even more frightening. This will surely – and definitely should – rate as one of the great debut performances.
From its doom-laden opening images to its frantic, nihilistic finale, The Plague is an incredibly composed, strikingly assured and wholly complete film from a writer/director with extraordinary promise. Charlie Polinger is a filmmaker to watch, and his debut feature is one you won’t forget…
