Independent Film Company is all set to release writer-director Charlie Polinger’s debut feature, The Plague, in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on December 24, ahead of a wider rollout on January 2.
Set within the awkward, often unforgiving space between childhood and adolescence – when instinct often outpaces conscience – this coming-of-age folk tale draws directly from Polinger’s own childhood journals. “I first came up with The Plague when I was cleaning out my childhood bedroom and came across my old journals from when I was 12,” Polinger explains. “Rereading them, I was reminded of my summer at an all-boys sports camp. It was a cruel social game – one that enforced conformity by singling out the misfit. The unspoken lesson was clear: those who didn’t conform were not simply different; they were seen as weak, and deserving of punishment.”
The film takes place at an all-boys water polo camp, where a socially awkward twelve-year-old succumbs to peer pressure and joins in a ritual of humiliating another boy. That boy is singled out and branded “The Plague” – a label that starts as crude humour, before the line between prank and cruelty disappears.
Polinger has cited influences including Carrie, Raw, Black Swan, and Eighth Grade, drawn to the idea of portraying “the social terror of vulnerability, transformation, and the body” through the eyes of boys – a perspective seldom explored in psychological horror.
The film stars Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Kenny Rasmussen, and Joel Edgerton.
In advance of The Plague’s release, CinemaChords’ Howard Gorman spoke with Blunck and Martin about creating a psychological thriller rooted in the uncertain space of early adolescence – where social anxiety takes on real emotional stakes, and the first contradictions between innocence and cruelty begin to surface.
