The plague

The Plague, the debut feature from Charlie Polinger, arrived at Cannes without the marketing machine or celebrity fanfare that usually accompanies films in the Un Certain Regard section, and yet it has already managed to carve a place in the collective memory of those who saw it. What Charlie Polinger has crafted is not a nostalgic ode to childhood, but a queasy, deeply unsettling dive into the turbulence of adolescence, where cruelty spreads faster than compassion, and the desperate desire to fit in often erodes whatever sense of self might still be forming. It is a film set in the summer of 2003 at a boys’ water polo camp, but its reach is much larger than its time and place suggest. From the first underwater shot—bodies plunging into the blue depths, limbs flailing, bubbles bursting like firecrackers—the viewer understands this is less a story of sports or summer fun and more a metaphorical drowning. Charlie Polinger’s debut comes armed with confidence, style, and an unflinching honesty that makes it one of the most unsettling yet essential films to emerge from the festival this year.

The narrative orbits around Ben, played with an extraordinary quiet intensity by Everett Blunck, a boy recently uprooted from Boston and dropped into the chlorine-soaked microcosm of the Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp. Ben is eager to belong, but belonging here comes at a price: the approval of Jake, the camp’s unspoken leader. Kayo Martin, in what will surely be remembered as a breakthrough performance, inhabits Jake with terrifying accuracy—a boy whose sharp eye for flaws becomes his currency of power. Jake is the kind of adolescent tyrant who smiles as he nicknames you, whose charisma cloaks cruelty, and who knows that in the fragile world of twelve-year-olds, the smallest difference can become a social death sentence. It is Jake who designates Eli, the oddball with a rash and a love for magic tricks, as the carrier of “the plague.” From that moment forward, the camp falls into a frenzy of superstition and cruelty, treating Eli as untouchable, an exile within a community already defined by exclusion. Kenny Rasmussen, who plays Eli, delivers a performance of such peculiar energy and vulnerability that the character never sinks into caricature. He is strange, yes, but vividly human, painfully aware of the gaze of others and the shame they project onto him.

The metaphor of the plague is as simple as it is devastating. The rash on Eli’s arms is less important than the hysteria it generates, and Charlie Polinger makes clear that the real infection is not on the body but in the mind of the group. Rumors become doctrine, shame becomes ritual, and cruelty becomes a form of social currency. It is impossible not to recall one’s own adolescence while watching these scenes, because the mechanics of exclusion are almost universally familiar. One critic at Cannes admitted the film brought back memories of his own childhood summer camp, where he and his peers cruelly nicknamed a boy “Skag,” dismissing everything he said, only to later discover that his claims were true. Another confessed that his entire grade once cut a girl out of their class photo because of a cruel nickname. These anecdotes underline how The Plague functions as more than cinema; it is a mirror, forcing viewers to confront not only the scars of their youth but also the roles they may have played in the suffering of others.

Where Charlie Polinger elevates the film beyond a bullying parable is in his use of cinematic language. Working with cinematographer Steven Breckon, a newcomer with an already remarkable eye, he frames adolescence as body horror. The underwater sequences are particularly haunting—boys’ legs kick furiously to stay afloat, bodies distorted by the ripples of water, the camera making them look both graceful and grotesque, suspended between survival and collapse. These moments do not merely illustrate the physicality of sport; they externalize the panic of trying to keep one’s head above water in a world where social codes can drown you. Paired with Johan Lenox’s remarkable score—a nightmarish composition of vocalizations, choral cries, and unsettling rhythms—the imagery turns adolescence into something monstrous and inescapable. The sound design, too, carries an oppressive weight; even silence feels heavy, like the moment before being shoved into the pool. Together, Steven Breckon and Johan Lenox help Charlie Polinger achieve something rare: a film that feels at once like a memory and a nightmare.

The adult presence in the story is largely confined to Daddy Wags, the camp’s water polo coach, played by Joel Edgerton with a weary authority. His character is not a villain but rather a reminder of how distant adult reassurances can feel to children caught in cycles of cruelty. When he tells Ben that bullying is “just a phase” and that it will pass, the moment lands with a double sting: we know he is right in the long run, but we also feel the truth of how endless a week of torment can feel to a twelve-year-old. Edgerton’s presence, though brief, gives the film a necessary anchor, a flicker of order in a world governed by chaos, but even he seems powerless to stop what is unfolding. The message is clear—adults can only do so much, and childhood, in its own cruel way, is often a self-governing ecosystem.

One of the film’s most daring qualities is how it explores complicity. Ben is torn between compassion for Eli and the seductive promise of acceptance within Jake’s circle. His internal conflict is portrayed not through melodrama but through subtle gestures—hesitations, stolen glances, the forced laughter that tastes bitter even as it escapes. Charlie Polinger captures the unbearable tension of being twelve and knowing what is right while being too afraid to act on it. What gives the film its emotional heft is the acknowledgment that cruelty does not only wound victims; it also stains those who participate in it, even reluctantly. The guilt of betraying one’s own moral compass just to avoid being a target is perhaps the film’s most haunting insight, and it forces the audience to reflect not only on the pain of being bullied but also on the shame of having once joined the laughter.

As The Plague progresses, it resists the temptation to resolve its tensions neatly. While there are moments of catharsis—most memorably in the final sequence, elevated by the unexpected use of a perfectly timed Moby track—the ending does not offer the tidy triumph audiences might expect. Instead, it concludes with a raw honesty that lingers, acknowledging that childhood cruelty does not disappear with a single act of rebellion or bravery. The scars remain, and so does the unease. This refusal of closure may frustrate some, but it is what makes the film so truthful. Adolescence rarely offers clean endings; it offers survival, and sometimes that is all.

That this is Charlie Polinger’s first feature makes The Plague all the more impressive. Backed by producers Lizzie Shapiro and Lucy McKendrick, Charlie Polinger has created a work of remarkable confidence, both stylistically daring and emotionally resonant. The performances from the young cast—Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Kenny Rasmussen—are among the most convincing seen at the festival, each boy embodying not just a character but a universal aspect of growing up. Blunck, in particular, captures the fragility of a boy standing at the threshold of adolescence, while Martin delivers a chilling portrayal of the intoxicating power of dominance. Rasmussen, too, makes Eli unforgettable, embodying the strange, magnetic presence of the boy everyone wants to avoid but no one can ignore.

In the end, The Plague is less about one boy’s torment than it is about the contagious nature of fear and cruelty. It shows how easily groups invent diseases to ostracize difference, how rumors spread like viruses, and how shame infects those who carry it and those who inflict it. It is about masculinity in formation, the rehearsal of power and exclusion, and the cost of trying to survive a world where fitting in means betraying oneself. For a debut feature, it is staggeringly accomplished; for audiences, it is both a haunting reminder of their own past and a warning about the ways cruelty perpetuates itself. At Cannes, surrounded by films with bigger budgets and louder campaigns, The Plague proved that sometimes the smallest films carry the heaviest weight. It spreads quietly, like the rumors at its core, until it becomes impossible to ignore.

The plague
Written and directed by Charlie Polinger
Produced by Lizzie Shapiro, Lucy McKendrick, Steven Schneider, Roy Lee, Derek Dauchy
Starring  Joel Edgerton, Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Kenny Rasmussen
Cinematography : Steven Breckon
Edited by Simon Njoo ASE, Henry Hayes
Music by Johan Lenox
Production companies : Spooky Pictures, The Space Program, Five Henrys, Image Nation Abu Dhabi
Distributed by Independent Film Company (United States)
Release dates: May 16, 2025 (Cannes), December 24, 2025 (United States)
Running time : 95 minutes

Seen on September 8 2025 at the Deauville International Center

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