I sat down for an interview with Joel Edgerton, the star of IFC’s The Plague (premiere: Cannes Un Certain Regard), as well as the film’s director, Charlie Polinger.
Edgerton has acted in:
King Arthur (2004)
Warrior (2011)
The Thing (2011)
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
The Great Gatsby (2013)
Midnight Special (2016)
Loving (2016)
It Comes at Night (2017)
Apple TV+’s Dark Matter (2024)
Train Dreams (2025)
Here’s The Plague’s synopsis:
A socially awkward tween endures the ruthless hierarchy at a water polo camp, his anxiety spiraling into psychological turmoil over the summer.
Edgerton plays the head water polo coach, but his character may as well be a wet noodle.
Edgerton expanded:
“It was about creating an adult figure who was almost not necessarily just purely hopeless, but a little bit failed in his own way and well-meaning, but at the end of the day, there's a set of rules that children create that they self-govern, that no parent, no matter how sturdy, can come in and dismantle their created legal system or social system.”
In Edgerton’s absence, the camp devolves into a Lord of the Flies-esque social experiment where a single boy is ostracized to such an extreme level that it bends into mythology.
Here is the trailer:
In select theaters on December 24th.
