Picture this: you’re twelve, awkward, desperate to belong, and stuck at an all-boys water polo camp where the social hierarchy is more vicious than any horror movie monster. One wrong move and you become the target. That’s the razor-edged world of The Plague, Charlie Polinger’s debut feature that stormed the festival circuit and walked away with Best Picture at Fantastic Fest 2025. It is not a traditional jump-scare horror. It is something colder, more precise, and far more personal — a psychological pressure cooker that turns the everyday cruelty of adolescence into pure dread.
The Story That Hits Where It Hurts
Set in the summer of 2003, the film follows Ben, a soft-spoken, socially anxious tween who arrives at camp hoping to disappear into the group. Instead he lands in a brutal pecking order run by the charismatic and ruthless Jake. When Ben befriends Eli — a lonely, acne-scarred outcast the other boys have decided is carrying a contagious “plague” — he finds himself pulled into a escalating ritual of exclusion, rumor, and fear.
What begins as typical summer-camp bullying slowly mutates into something more sinister. The line between real illness and manufactured hysteria blurs. Ben’s anxiety spirals. Friendships curdle. The camp itself starts to feel like a closed system designed to break the weak. Polinger never needs elaborate set pieces. The terror lives in the locker-room whispers, the forced laughter, the quiet moments when a kid realizes no one is coming to help him.
What Makes It Unique
Most coming-of-age stories soft-pedal the cruelty of boyhood. The Plague does the opposite. It stares straight at the way groups create monsters out of the different kid, and how easily the rest of us go along with it just to stay safe. The “plague” is both literal rumor and perfect metaphor for the contagious nature of fear and social rejection.
Polinger shoots the camp with a clinical, almost documentary eye that makes every wet tile and echoing hallway feel oppressive. The young cast is terrifyingly authentic — no Hollywood-cute kids here, just real, messy, complicated boys. The result is a film that feels less like a genre exercise and more like a memory you wish you could forget. It sits in the same uncomfortable space as Stand by Me or Lord of the Flies, but filtered through the heightened psychological intensity of modern elevated horror.
Awards and Festival Heat
The Plague premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2025 and immediately started collecting hardware. Best Picture in the main competition at Fantastic Fest was the loudest win, but the film also took major prizes at Deauville, Woodstock, Calgary, and beyond. Critics have been unusually united: it currently sits near the top of the year’s best lists with a sky-high Rotten Tomatoes score. For a first-time director working with an almost entirely young cast, that level of consensus is rare.
The Talent Making It Sting
Charlie Polinger writes and directs with the confidence of someone who has lived these dynamics. The standout is newcomer Everett Blunck as Ben — his performance is quiet, reactive, and devastating. You feel every awkward silence and every small betrayal on his face. Kayo Martin is magnetic and genuinely unsettling as the alpha Jake. Kenny Rasmussen makes Eli heartbreaking without ever turning him into a pure victim. And Joel Edgerton, as the camp’s adult presence “Daddy Wags,” brings just enough authority and moral ambiguity to keep the grown-up world from feeling safe.
The production team includes Spooky Pictures (Roy Lee and Steven Schneider) and Image Nation Abu Dhabi — the same circle that helped bring The Vile to the screen — which explains the film’s sharp genre instincts even while it remains grounded in emotional realism.
Basic Info
Title: The Plague
Director: Charlie Polinger
Main Cast
- Everett Blunck as Ben
- Kayo Martin as Jake
- Kenny Rasmussen as Eli
- Joel Edgerton as Daddy Wags
World premiere: Cannes Film Festival, May 2025
Limited U.S. theatrical: December 24, 2025
Wider expansion: early 2026
When and Where it is available: Digital rental and purchase available now on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. Streaming on AMC+, Sundance Now, and related channels. Availability continues to expand across platforms.
