Curator Watchlist
A tense, sharply observed summer-camp pressure cooker that turns adolescent hierarchy into something close to horror. The performances and sound design sound especially strong, and the film seems to balance dread, humor, and empathy rather than relying on bullying as a simple metaphor.
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 1h 38m
Director: Charlie Polinger
Starring: Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Joel Edgerton
A socially awkward tween endures the ruthless hierarchy at a water polo camp, his anxiety spiraling into psychological turmoil over the summer.
Charlie Polinger
Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Joel Edgerton
A tense, sharply observed summer-camp pressure cooker that turns adolescent hierarchy into something close to horror. The performances and sound design sound especially strong, and the film seems to balance dread, humor, and empathy rather than relying on bullying as a simple metaphor.
The Plague looks like a summer-camp nightmare built from very ordinary cruelty. Its setup is deceptively simple: a socially awkward tween gets trapped inside the status games of a water polo camp, and the film lets that social pressure metastasize into genuine psychological terror. That premise gives it a strong emotional hook, especially if you respond to stories that make adolescent embarrassment feel life-or-death.
What stands out most from the response is the film’s control of tone. It apparently knows when to be funny, when to be gross, and when to go fully nerve-shredding, without losing sight of the boy at the center of it. The praise for the performances and sound design suggests a movie that works as much through sensation as through plot, using style to make exclusion feel physical.
This is the kind of film that can feel brutal if you’ve ever been on the wrong side of a group dynamic. But that brutality seems purposeful rather than exploitative. If you like coming-of-age stories that understand how cruelty becomes culture, this should land hard.
itscharlibb (5★) · 5964 likes
literally sat in the car leaving the screening of this movie feeling like i’m reeling. sound design on point, undeniable performances and the transition from charming boyhood to total fucking chaos left me shook. it’s so confusing sometimes to be a BOY.
davidehrlich (3.5★) · 2468 likes
sometimes i'm so fucking glad that i never have to be young again.
TheGraduate75 (5★) · 1463 likes
Ok. I am biased. So biased that I had come on here and write my first review (maybe. I don't recall writing others)Up front: my son is one of the boys in this film. I won't say which one. Of course, I'm new to this, so maybe my name is visible and I'm stupid. Either way... As an actor, my son gets auditions. And I am the one who usually reads scripts. Over a year ago, he… more
cob (4★) · 1213 likes
boys are fucking terrifying
James (Schaffrillas) (4★) · 1014 likes
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH, and I cannot stress this enough, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Shares the same uneasy blend of adolescent vulnerability, menace, and genre pressure, with a strong sense of dread built from kid-world cruelty.
A painfully accurate portrait of social anxiety and the emotional violence of being a kid among kids, though with a more tender comic sensibility.
For the raw, observant child performance style and the way it captures childhood as a place of instability, embarrassment, and fleeting freedom.
A devastating teen-pressure story that understands how group dynamics can turn ordinary summer plans into moral catastrophe.
Not about children, but it shares the same fascination with social exclusion, humiliation, and the cruelty of small-group ecosystems.
For viewers drawn to psychological unease around youth, alienation, and the terror that can grow inside a hostile social environment.
A severe character study of repression and humiliation, with a similarly punishing interest in social discomfort and inner fracture.
Its cold, escalating dread and sense of social wrongness will appeal to anyone who likes emotional unease pushed into nightmare territory.
A haunting coming-of-age film about damage, shame, and the long shadow of youth, with a similarly serious emotional aftertaste.
Captures adolescent mystery and social pressure through a stylized, melancholy lens that turns youth into something eerie and unreachable.
A classic of teenage humiliation curdling into horror, and still one of the clearest cinematic expressions of peer cruelty.
A compact, uncanny youth film that uses group dynamics, bodily unease, and social belonging to create a quietly terrifying mood.
bullying, adolescence, social hierarchy, male anxiety, psychological distress, summer camp, group cruelty, coming-of-age
psychological thriller, coming-of-age, bullying, teen anxiety, summer camp, social realism, body tension, horror-adjacent, male adolescence, indie drama