“I’ve two nearly 4-year-olds, and I’m fairly highly effective and influential in sure circles, however not with two 4-year-olds,” says Joel Edgerton. “Youngsters run their very own nation, in a means.”
Edgerton’s been considering lots recently about these nascent years earlier than getting into maturity because of his newest challenge, The Plague, which appears to be like on the difficult and sometimes terrifying social dynamics of children — particularly adolescent boys.
The function debut of director Charlie Polinger, the movie is ready on this planet of a aggressive water polo summer time camp, focusing totally on the dynamic inside a gaggle of 12- and 13-year-old boys who’ve ostracized one camper as a result of he has “the plague,” a nasty-looking case of eczema. One camper, Ben (Everett Blunck), struggles between his want to assist the outcast camper and his fear about incurring the wrath of the bigger group. Within the movie, Edgerton performs the well-meaning if ineffective water polo coach.
“Within the age of renewed questions on and issues of the manosphere, The Plague is a prescient title,” wrote THR critic Lovia Gyarkye in her evaluation of the movie, which is shortly changing into one of many stand-outs of the fest.
Past displaying appreciable vary as an actor in all the things from Baz Luhrmann’s The Nice Gatsby to Paul Schrader’s The Grasp Gardener and George Clooney’s The Boys within the Boat, Edgerton can be a filmmaker — he obtained a DGA nom for first-time director for his 2015 thriller The Reward, which he additionally wrote and starred in.
Forward of Cannes 2025, the place The Plague is ready to display within the Un Sure Regard part, Edgerton talked to THR concerning the inherent horror of being a preteen: “I’ve usually mentioned about faculty expertise that it’s like a documentary the place you’re watching a depleting watering gap within the African savanna.”
What drew you to a narrative that’s centered on a gaggle of 13-year-olds?
I’m actually on this concept of when will we develop into accountable adults. There may be an untethered, unchecked interval of our life, though now we have dad and mom, now we have lecturers and, on this case, camp counselors. There’s a nature in youngsters that’s pure, that may be lovely or could be darkish. It’s via a passage of experiential moments that we study what makes others round us really feel good, and subsequently how that displays our personal character and that shapes who we’re. I assumed the journey inside this movie of the central character was a extremely, actually fascinating common exploration of how we form ourselves on this planet. I simply wished to assist be sure that the film received made.
What was it concerning the script that had you saying, “I need to assist it get made”?
There’s an actual cautious consideration and accuracy to how youngsters — whereas they could be horrible at understanding the ramifications or the collateral injury that they will trigger — are glorious at socio-diplomacy. They study the place to place themselves inside a flock or a herd. They perceive hierarchy. They perceive what’s harmful and what’s secure. Whether or not we consider these instincts and cues to be good ones, they in a short time discern the place they should stand and with whom. Ben’s journey is about understanding that it’s harmful to be caring in direction of the ostracized, wounded member of the group, however his nature attracts him in that course and attracts him into the hazard as properly.
There may be the previous adage in movie about not working with youngsters and animals, however on this film, you’re solely working with youngsters. How did you discover the expertise?
I at all times marvel at youngsters, regardless of the ages of children that I’ve labored with. You’ll work with a toddler who’s by no means been in a movie earlier than and also you’ll study one thing from them. Kayo [Martin], who performs the bully, he might run rings round me to the purpose the place we might shoot issues, and when the strains had been blurred, I wished to throttle him. He knew that his job was simply to be cocky to everyone, and so he didn’t cease with me. I don’t simply look upwards to the older, wiser actors. There’s one thing to be discovered from everyone. It’s very spectacular, too, on Charlie’s facet, to create the sense of hazard for the character of Ben. Intention and impact are various things. I would say one thing simply to make my buddies giggle at me that basically hurts you. I feel there’s a actual accuracy and element inside that for the movie. It’s not identical to bullies going, “I’m going to be imply.” It’s “I’m being imply as a result of I’m making an attempt to outlive.” For Kayo’s character, his means of surviving is to be the chief of a gaggle.
While you put it like that, being a child is fairly Darwinian.
The grownup world has its personal governing algorithm, and we impose these on our personal youngsters, supposedly to indicate them the ropes to the world that they’re about to take a maintain of. However youngsters have their very own language, their very own guidelines. They create them. They create their very own society. Then an grownup, like my character, turns into a foreigner inside their nation.
You’re actually the one grownup within the movie. What did you see as your character’s place in the course of the youngsters’ dynamic?
Adults can hover round a camp or a college or a family, however they will’t be all figuring out and all seeing. Their recommendation or their very own expertise can replicate or provide knowledge, but it surely doesn’t essentially assist if you’re residing within the ache of one thing. Ben might bear in mind my character as Charlie remembers his expertise 30 years later, however I can assure it’s exhausting to obtain all of that parental knowledge or teacherly knowledge if you’re within the midst of the turmoil of residing in a nation of kids. This was the closest factor I’d ever learn to a Lord of the Flies kind situation — a society constructed and run and arranged by youngsters. I’ve been an enormous fan of flicks like 13 previously, as a result of they’re like a peephole or a window right into a life we don’t get to expertise as soon as we’re of a sure age. We don’t understand how youngsters speak after they’re with one another. I feel we’re all terrified of them. I feel we’re terrified of youth.
There are occasions the place the film looks like a real horror movie, like there’s something audiences must be really afraid of onscreen.
I’ve usually mentioned concerning the faculty expertise that it’s like a documentary the place you’re watching a depleting watering gap within the African savanna, crocodiles, and there’s a child antelope and all the things in between. It’s a harmful place, and something can occur. There’s one thing actually Full Metallic Jacket about this film. There are related tones to this.
I assumed the selection of setting it inside a water polo camp was fascinating. What did you consider having it set in that world particularly?
It might have been something. It might be a tennis camp, gymnastics or regardless of the tradition. The specificity of that tradition, cinematically, is gorgeous, and the confines of being in a single swim heart and the hazard of the water could be very potent. By means of the expertise, I used to be simply considering again to so many experiences of my very own as a toddler and everybody on the crew was speaking about that stuff. Childhood is filled with sentimental, lovely recollections, but it surely’s additionally stuffed with loopy trauma. These issues diminish over time, we transfer on, and occasions get swallowed up, however they’ve all made their little form of scars.