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| Image courtesy of UTA Independent Film Group. |
"Hell is for children," Pat Benatar once sang and that certainly applies to Charlie Bolinger's debut," The Plague," which acts as a devil's advocate to all of those films that portray adolescence as a wistful and magical time.
The picture, set inexplicably in 2003, takes place at a sleepover water polo camp - which I suppose must be a real thing - where newcomer Ben (Everett Blunck) briefly falls in with the camp's in-crowd before eventually becoming one of its objets of torment.
The film's title refers to a skin ailment of some sort with which the kid - Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) - who was the previous target of the camp's bullies appears to be afflicted. The boys tells Ben that the plague can spread, so they move away quickly when Eli approaches or jump in the shower if they bump into him.
The camp's director (Joel Edgerton) clearly does not like the lead bully - Jake (Kayo Martin), a pint-sized monster who seems too small to effectively be a bully, yet he somehow has sway among all the others - and tries to keep some semblance of order at the camp. But it's obvious that he cannot watch everyone's every move, and so the bullying ramps up gradually.
"The Plague" plays like a horror movie - and for some the characters who are experiencing it, it probably is. But this is no after-school special: There are some truly unsettling moments involving bodily mutilation and a final scene of dancing that strikes a balance somewhere between euphoria and mania.
Blunck is very good in the lead role, while Martin does a great job of capturing the smiling, banal evil that preteen boys can often inhabit. The film's score often sounds like one lifted from a 1970s Italian giallo, and the camera work - both underwater and above - is memorable.
I'm not sure if "The Plague" says anything groundbreaking on the topic of bullying, but its overall atmosphere is effective and the queasy depiction of how the bullied must walk on eggshells around their tormentors feels right on the money. Bolinger is obviously a talent and I'm curious to see what he does next.
