The Plague (Trailer Review)

The trailer for The Plague, the directorial debut of Charlie Polinger, is the greatest and most terrifying I've seen since the one for Hereditary. In a way, this trailer is even more impressive for the fact that The Plague doesn't appear to be a horror movie. Rather, it looks to be a horrifying coming-of-age drama about the real-world horrors of bullying, the most primal and almost unavoidable expression of dominance inherent in nearly every one of us, tinged with body horror-esque imagery. As of this writing, The Plague sits in the exclusive class of the 100% approval-rating club on Rotten Tomatoes based on 24 reviews, with a great average rating of 7.9/10. While there's still plenty of time for that single "rotten" review to rear its ugly head like the skin rash that serves as the titular source of psychological control and knock the triple score down to two digits, it's safe to assume that, whether it fits into the horror genre or not, The Plague will swim down as one of the most original and scariest films of 2025.

Turning the clock back 22 years ago to the summer of 2003, 12-year-old Ben (Everett Blunck) is joining an all-boys water polo camp under the supervision of a coach who goes by the bizarrely creepy nickname, "Daddy Wags" (Joel Edgerton), seemingly the sole source of authority at the camp. As the new kid on the team, Ben struggles to immerse himself in the social circle of the other young boys, all of whom have already formed a tight-knit family unit under the leadership of Jake (Kayo Martin), the relative big man on campus. However, there's one other kid who hasn't been so warmly accepted into Jake's clique: the mysterious Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a social outcast who's been ostracized by his fellow swimmers for a pronounced rash on his back. According to Jake, this isn't just any skin blemish; it's "the plague," a contagious disease transmittable by touch. If you come into physical contact with Eli, you simply have to wash your body vigorously in the shower, lest your brain "turn to baby food," Jake ominously warns. "No brain, no nothing."

The central mystery of The Plague is the plague itself: is it real or merely a figment of these boys' overheated imaginations? Can you actually become infected through touch, or is that just a threat weaponized by Jake to manipulate and control his fellow campers, who seem to be more like the devoted followers of a sadistic, power-obsessed cult leader? My guess is the latter, which is actually more terrifying. If Polinger were to reveal in the final reel that the plague was real all along, not only would that contradict the harsh reality of bullying which he's evidently aspiring to capture, but also run the risk of justifying his characters' cruel behavior. If the disease is nothing more than a fabricated concept constructed by Jake to single out someone who doesn't conform to his image of coolness and social acceptability, not only would that serve as a realistic method of preadolescent torment, but also illustrate the frightening degree of Jake's dominance over his gang of followers. 

Polinger's examination of young male bullying and the ramifications of groupthink seems to play out like the locker room scene at the beginning of Carrie expanded to feature length. In The Plague, Ben is the Sue Snell to Jake's Chris Hargensen, and Eli is Carrie White (albeit without the telekinesis). Like Sue Snell, Ben is a goodhearted individual who temporarily gets sucked in to the groupthink of his peers' abhorrent behavior toward Eli. In his own life, he would immediately befriend a tortured loner like Eli, not bully him for his awkwardness or grotesque back blemish. But when thrust into the inner circle of a social clique led by such a manipulative and malicious leader, and desperate to maintain his own acceptance therein, Ben's innate benevolence is supplanted by a hitherto unknown cowardice, an ability to join in on the bullying as long as it means saving himself from becoming the next target. At one point, a camper who thinks he's contracted the titular fatal disease is washing himself in the shower while the rest of his teammates gather around and jeer at him, and Ben is among those laughing, deriving pleasure from someone else's irrational panic. 

Surely enough, the thing Ben fears most -- losing his short-lived popularity among his teammates -- comes to fruition when Jake, angered and betrayed by Ben's burgeoning friendship with Eli, spreads a rumor that he has now become infected, making Ben the fresh meat of his camp's vicious feeding frenzy. 

When Edgerton first received the script, he wanted to direct, but Polinger insisted this was a story he personally needed to bring to the screen, so Edgerton offered to produce and co-star as the well-intentioned but hopelessly ineffectual Daddy Wags. The first clever choice Polinger makes as a writer is setting his story in 2003, a time not too far removed from where we are today, but when the presence of cellphones wasn't nearly as omnipresent, and awareness of bullying in school wasn't as powerful. Immediately I'm reminded of the suicide of Ryan Patrick Halligan, a 13-year-old boy who was bullied at school and online before he resolved to take his own life on October 7, 2003. Like Ryan, Ben is an insecure, friendly, scrawny kid struggling to fit in, and Jake is the unnamed, all-powerful bully who made Ryan the primary target for his unmotivated sadism. The parallels are striking. Where Ryan's bully used a personal story shared by him about a medical procedure to spread a rumor that Ryan was gay, triggering a wave of homophobic backlash, Jake leverages the psychological fear of the alleged brain-melting skin rash to strip Ben of his social acceptance among the team. 

What makes this story so gripping is its universality. Almost everyone can relate to the social positions adopted by Ben, Jake, Eli, and the rest of the horde. At one point or another, we've all found ourselves in Ben's shoes, so desperate to fit in with the group that we willfully sacrifice our own morality to preserve our popularity. In all honesty, I'm not exempt. When I was in elementary school, there was a boy almost everyone partook in the bullying of. His name was Andrew, and like Eli, he was a most unusual soul. In other words, the perfect outcast. He was moderately overweight (always an easy vulnerability to exploit), and had an inexplicable tendency to burst out crying at the slightest of jabs. Seriously, this kid would cry at literally anything, so naturally a swarm of students made it their daily entertainment to exploit his unknown condition. 

Gun to my head, while I never directly participated in the antics that would engender his tearful screaming fits, I admittedly derived a certain amount of joy from them. When he would erupt into a customary crying spell, I didn't feel sorry for him. After all, how can you sympathize with someone who cries his eyes out over someone making a kissing noise? Instead, my best friend and I would look at each other in the cafeteria and crack up. Once school let out, he and I would meet up in the hallway, and he would gleefully inform me of Andrew's latest episodes of the day. Believe it or not, I was the closest thing Andrew had to a friend, as I only reveled in his outbursts from the shadows while maintaining a friendly facade to his face. I'm a decent person, but certainly no saint. 

If you want to talk true evil, the Jake in this scenario was a boy named Zach, one of the most popular students in my grade who harbored a singular contempt for Andrew and devised some of the most ingenious (albeit physically harmless) methods of torment against him. Much like how Eli is accused of carrying the plague, resulting in his peers hurriedly rising from their seats in the cafeteria and relocating once he sits at their table, Andrew was similarly accused of possessing an undefined "dangerous" touch. If you made contact with his body, you were suddenly soiled with "the Andrew touch," and desperately needed to apply hand sanitizer.

If The Plague is merely a coming-of-age drama, albeit one much darker and bloodier than average, it's certainly shot and scored like a horror film courtesy of cinematographer Steven Breckon, who uses wide shots to imbue ordinary moments with a touch of menace -- Ben and Daddy Wags walking down the school's hallway as the coach fills his new student in on the ropes, and the windows of the indoor pool reflected in the water -- and composer Johan Lenox, whose music is eerie, droning, and propulsive in a way that reflects Ben's steadily ratcheting anxiety that he's caught the plague and, worse, lost his acceptance among his teammates. The final underwater shot of the trailer, in which the characters swim to the bottom of the pool, blends innocent youthful bravado with the jarring blare of what sounds like a trombone to produce a foreboding chill in my spine every time I watch it. And I've watched this trailer more times than any other. Consider it the Stand by Me of movie trailers. 

Joel Edgerton is obviously the most prominent actor in the cast, but because this is a horror story told from the powerless perspective of Ben, the spotlight shines brightest on Everett Blunck, whose beautiful, freckled face of innate innocence conveys a range of conflicting emotions: the universal desire for group acceptance, chuckling disbelief in the supernatural plague, a willingness to forsake his conscience in the name of going along with the group, mounting unease over Eli's rash's potential for contagion, and the social alienation generated by the choice to remain true to himself. Ben is torn between maintaining allegiance to Jake to ensure these three months swim by without a hitch, and following his heart by standing up for the little guy. Blunck appears to be submitting a phenomenal performance that will put a human face on this painfully relatable internal conflict. 

On the opposite end of the social totem pole is Kayo Martin's Jake, the ringleader of the wolf pack who derives his greatest joy from inflicting humiliation on those he deems different and exercising control over his weak-minded subordinates. Polinger allows Martin to show off the real-life skill for which he's famous on YouTube, evinced in a shot of Jake skateboarding down the hallway at night to symbolize the lack of adult supervision that's given rise to the kids' free reign. For three months, this water polo camp is a whole world dominated by children, in which the order and discipline exercised by parents are nonexistent, and the supervision of adults is scarce. Edgerton lingers on the sidelines, portraying the type of "authority figure" who tries to offer a paternal comfort to the intimidated new kid, but is both ignorant to the juvenile cruelty transpiring among his own charges and somehow powerless to gain control over it. With the authoritative presence exuded by Edgerton in It Comes at Night, will Daddy Wags finally step up to the plate in the inevitable confrontation between Ben and Jake? Or will Ben have to learn the hard way that in the real world, you have only yourself to depend on? 

In contrast to the genial, exuberant personality showcased in his YouTube videos, Martin appears terrifying as Jake: sadistic, unempathetic, narcissistic, a preteen bully destined to someday graduate into a full-fledged serial killer. When Ben comes to him in private, begging him to inform their peers that the plague is fake and he's unaffected, Jake responds with a laugh and unconvincing "Okay." He can see how upset Ben is at being ostracized, and that fills him with pride. In an exchange that recalls the iconic ending of The Strangers, Ben despairingly asks, "Why are you doing this to me?" to which Jake (at least according to the editing of the trailer) silently shrugs his shoulders and looks up at Ben with a slight smirk that clearly says, "Because I can." 

Similar to how Darren Aronofsky scattered disquieting hallucinatory visuals throughout his psychological drama, Black Swan, so too does Polinger emphasize the grotesquerie and vulnerability of the human body through the deep red blotch covering the entirety of Eli's back, accounting for the swim shirt he wears during practice, and a close-up of a piece of loose skin on someone's thumb. What makes these images so instinctually squirm-inducing is the naturalness that underlies them. There's nothing supernatural behind them; Eli has an unfortunate rash, exacerbated by the bullying he endures each day, and someone was scratching their thumb hard enough to break skin, possibly to alleviate anxiety. Yet they still can't help generating a similar sensation of grossness and unease to legitimate body horror. 

Whether the plague is real or not is of little consequence. This is a story about the toxicity of sacrificing individuality to the collective force of a group, led by someone who leverages their power for evil. In the final reel, the campers will gather together in the night and sneak down into the pool with flashlights, in a shot that recalls a repeated one from Andy Muschietti's big-screen adaptation of It, for a physical altercation between the forces of good and evil, here depicted by Ben and Jake, respectively. The climactic fight will transpire in the pool, and the baby blue of the water will be perverted by the shedding of blood. Will this schoolyard fight result in a fatality? Will Ben strip Jake of his long-held authority in front of his friends who have been too intimidated to stand up to him and expose him for the manipulative sociopath he really is? 

Find out when The Plague spreads to theaters worldwide on December 24. In the meantime, check out the uniquely chilling trailer below.