The Plague

Charlie Polinger's drama about tweenager peer pressure is a disturbingly accurate meditation on social conformity, with Everett Blunck in one of the best child performances, ever.

The ages of 12 to 14 are some of the toughest to get through, and not surprisingly also the ones your brain’s defense mechanisms work hardest to shroud in memory. “The Plague” does an incredible job of bringing them back to vivid, traumatizing life.

Writer/director Charlie Polinger, in his debut feature film, presents a drama about tweenager peer pressure and a disturbingly accurate meditation on social conformity. Set at a summer camp for water polo athletes, it is a movie about small things that become overwhelmingly large when you’re at that age, especially if you’re an awkward kid who doesn’t quite know where they fit in.

It’s co-produced and co-stars Joel Edgerton, having a fine year between this and “Train Dreams.” I’m guessing it was his participation that got this film made, but he’s just a background player in the story, portraying the coach who tries to do the right thing but like most adults always seems to have his back turned when the worst abuse is going on.

The center of the film is Ben, an anxious 12-year-old played by Everett Blunck in one of the most standout performances by a child actor you’ll see this year — or ever.

Polinger shoots Blunck right up in his face, with extreme close-up used much of the time so we can register every little subtle expression of fear and horror that crosses Ben’s face. What’s really impressive is that because Ben is trying to fit in, most of the time he’s attempting to conceal his emotions. So Blunck has to show these extreme feelings, but also Ben hiding them.

It’s like the old saw for a young actor learning to play a drunk: the secret is not to appear obviously blitzed, but trying to cover it up.

The title refers to a nasty little game the boys (and some of the girls) play at camp: pretending someone who is different or weird has some kind of dread illness, so everyone runs screaming and laughing when they appear. The first target, Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), experiences this when he sets his lunch tray down at the table of some of his teammates, who all immediately get up and scamper to another table, leaving him isolated.

Eli is also very awkward like Ben, but unlike him makes little attempt to hide it. He would seem to be on the spectrum, and on some level actually revels in his uniqueness as the “plague” kid, even pulling a locker room gag on Ben where Eli appears to cut off his finger.

Because he’s kind-hearted, Ben does not ostracize Eli like the others, and even begins to socialize with him — though being careful to do so out of sight of the others. However, when he’s caught applying some skin cream to a strange rash on Eli’s back, Ben finds himself becoming the target of the “plague” game.

The ringleader is Jake (Kayo Martin), who’s physically smaller than most of the other boys but seems to find his confidence in leading the bullying. Because he has to rely on his wits rather than physical intimidation, Jake has learned to navigate the sensitive mechanisms of our modern school/sports systems so as not to open himself up to punishment. Even getting a talking-to from the coach only modifies the form of the bullying, in some ways making it even worse.

There are girls at the camp but they are kept separate, and the boys view them as a mysterious and mesmerizing force they know they must eventually contend with but for now would rather let lie. Early on during one of the rare co-ed sessions, a boy experiences an erection that instantly makes him a laughingstock in such a way everyone knows he will never recover from it.

Things go on from there. For awhile it seems like there will be a rapprochement between Ben and Jake, or at least a cessation of the abuse. But of course it goes on and intensifies, and Ben begins to project it onto others as a way of removing himself from the line of fire.

The film operates as a dissertation on how bullies are created and perpetrated. One experiences abuse, and then passes it onto others exactly like a disease. The trick, of course, is that becoming a bully does not cure you of the fear that caused it.

There’s also something in the depiction of Jake and his fellows that people don’t like to talk about: many bullies, particularly the alpha ones, keep it up long after they have saved themselves from being the target because they enjoy it. They take pleasure from seeing others hurt. We can see this all around us in society today.

The cinematography by Steven Breckon adds mightily to the sense of alienation and distorted reality Ben experiences, his perception bending as his mood does. There’s almost a surrealist note to it, greatly enhanced by the musical score by Johan Lenox, which is often just atonal swirls of instrumentation and sound effects.

Few films have stayed with me like “The Plague” has. I saw it almost two months ago and I can still recall many of its moments with startling clarity. It would not be surprising to admit I saw a lot of myself in Ben, pictures long shut away into half-remembered darkness.

Here’s a bravura movie that welcomes the searing light.