150 Word Review: 'The Plague' (2025)
Boys will be boys
Movies that are hard to categorize are my favorite. The Plague is a disturbing coming-of-age drama about mean boys; it has elements of psychological horror, but it’s also melancholy. And it features one of last year’s most memorable villains: Kayo Martin as 12-year-old terror Jake
The Plague takes place at a water polo summer camp where some of the boys are parked by their parents for months on end. The year is 2003.
Everett Blunck stars as an anxious young man awkwardly embraced by the in-crowd, a clique of cruel little dudes. They’re the ones who tell him that Kenny Rasmussen’s Eli, an outcast with a skin rash, has “the plague”. Eli is sensitive and troubled, a victim of bullying, resigned to his fate. Joel Edgerton has a small role as a highly ineffective camp counselor. The Plague is rare; an unflinching, upsetting, deeply compassionate story about childhood and testosterone