The Plague Review – Feels Uncomfortably Real, And Weirdly Predictive

The Plague Review: I walked out of The Plague at Cannes still feeling that weird mix of discomfort and recognition buzzing under my skin. You know that feeling, you watch something that doesn’t just tell a story, it pokes at memories you didn’t exactly plan on revisiting. That was my whole experience with The Plague.

My Rating: 3.5/5

Category	Details
Title	The Plague
Director	Charlie Paulinger
Writer	Charlie Paulinger
Genre	Psychological Thriller / Coming-of-Age Drama
Main Themes	Bullying, social hierarchy, group dynamics, shame, masculinity, exclusion
Main Cast	Everett Blunk, Kaio Martin, Kenny Raz Musen, Joel Edgerton
Runtime	1h 35m

Charlie Paulinger, who wrote and directed it, drops us into a summer water-polo camp full of tween boys, and right away, you can feel the tension soaking through the place like humidity. On paper, it’s a psychological thriller. But what it’s really doing is peeling back the layers of how boys treat each other when adults aren’t paying attention.

Most movies get bullying completely wrong. They go for the cartoon version, the big loud kid, two idiots standing behind him, all of them obsessed with giving swirlies. But the dangerous kind of bully? The one who doesn’t look like a bully at all? The kid who knows exactly how the group works, who gets inside everyone’s head, who decides who’s “in” and who’s “out”? That’s the type this film nails.

I’ve met that kid. Everyone has. Even if you weren’t the target, you saw how the air in the room changed when he walked in. How every joke, every comment, every small embarrassment suddenly became a public spectacle. The Plague captures that dynamic with a kind of sharp accuracy that stings.

The way Paulinger shoots this thing doesn’t let you off the hook either, tight, claustrophobic close-ups, the kind that almost force you to sit inside these kids’ discomfort. It’s intense, but not in a flashy way… more like someone turning a light directly into your eyes and refusing to look away first.

And the genre elements, those small hints of horror and psychological tension, could’ve easily derailed the whole thing. I kept waiting for the movie to cross the line into “too much,” the way some films can’t resist making the metaphor louder than the message. But it never loses itself. It stays grounded, which is probably why it got under my skin the way it did.

There’s one scene in the middle with Joel Edgerton that is going to spark a lot of conversations. It’s messy, morally tricky, and there’s no clean answer to the issue it raises. Honestly, that’s what I liked the most: the film isn’t here to give solutions. It just wants you to sit with the reality that bullying has no simple fix; if it did, we would’ve solved it generations ago.

And let me say this: the child performances are the soul of this movie. Edoardo “Kaio” Martin as the main bully is frighteningly accurate—not exaggerated, not theatrical, just painfully real. Everett Blunk gives the film its emotional center, walking that impossible line between wanting to fit in and wanting to be a good person. And Kenny Raz Musen as the kid on the outside… I swear, that performance felt like a collage of kids I grew up with.

Joel Edgerton is good, but the kids eclipse him, not because they out-acted him, but because their roles are the ones that cut the deepest.

I didn’t expect the ending to hit emotionally, but it did. Harder than I thought it would. Because even if your own childhood wasn’t traumatic, everyone has that one moment they wish they could erase. That one shameful memory. That one time you felt small. The film digs that up, not for trauma points, but because that’s the only honest way to tell this story.

Also Read: King Ivory Review – A Raw, Relentless Look at an Epidemic Most People Pretend Not to See

By the time the credits rolled, I wasn’t thinking about cinematography or technique or pacing. I was thinking about my own middle school years, the kids I watched get pushed out of circles, the moments I didn’t speak up, the moments I didn’t know how.

So yeah, I’m landing at a 3.5/5. Maybe if I’d been more detached, I’d call it an eight. But movies that can drag old memories out of you without feeling manipulative? That’s rare.

And if people think I’m rating everything too highly, trust me, I’m skipping the films I didn’t like. I’m not here to waste my time (or yours) writing about lukewarm movies.

What Worked and What Didn’t in The Plague Review