Set at a boy’s water polo training camp in the summer of 2003, Charlie Polinger’s debut feature plunges beneath the waterline to scope out concealed psychological depths. It may not be news that these kids operate in a brutal, animal-like hierarchy driven by braggadocio, bullying, hazing and gaslighting – but from the stunning initial submerged shot of a pool glittering like a starfield, Polinger brings impressive stylistic bite to this tween hellscape: the kind of trenchant intent you might associate with David Fincher.
Latecomer Ben (Everett Blunck) is thrown in at the deep end when he arrives. Desperate to ingratiate himself with the cool crowd lorded over by the impish Jake (Kayo Martin), he aims to avoid the pariah status of house lummox Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), who is supposedly afflicted with a (made-up) disease the brats dub “the plague”. Anyone who touches Eli must immediately scrub themselves lest they start showing symptoms of diminished brain function and terminal dorkiness. Ben meekly falls in with Jake’s psyops, despite the insistence of coach Daddy Wags (Joel Edgerton) that he should just be himself.
The first hour of The Plague is fantastic, with echoes of both the juvenile initiation rites you see in Lucile Hadžihalilović’s work and, in a drunken bin fire blow-out, bursts of Larry Clark-esque wantonness. As well as visual sharpness as he observes Jake’s mob almost like a nature documentary, Polinger has a keen ear for the nonsense piped direct from the 12-year-old imagination. Among the topics of conversation here: 90s rock outfit Smash Mouth, pirate exclamations, the ethics of bestiality, and how best to fake chopping off your own thumb.
Flirting with body horror, the film never quite resolves its suggestion that, if not quite real, the plague could be psychosomatic. As Ben goes over to oddball corner, The Plague begins to succumb to predictable beats and divulges its influences too easily: the way it frames Eli as a prepubescent Private Pyle, and the ending lifted from Beau Travail. Beyond an ever-reassuring Edgerton, the three young performers stand out in their unfiltered rawness: Blunck clammily eager to please and increasingly disturbed; Martin intimidating despite his tiny stature; Rasmussen stretching a cartoon geek role into genuinely unsettling outsiderdom. This is a memorable education in the laws of the tween jungle.
• The Plague is on digital platforms from 20 April.
