The Plague review – water polo camp turns into tween hellscape with impressive stylistic bite

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With Fincher-like intent, director Charlie Polinger scopes out concealed psychological depths in a debut that sees the laws of the jungle play out Set at a boy’s water polo training camp in the summer of 2003, Charlie Polinger’s debut feature plunges beneath the waterline to scope out concealed psychological depths. It may not be news that these kids operate in a brutal, animal-like hierarchy driven by braggadocio, bullying, hazing and gaslighting – but from the stunning initial submerged shot of a pool glittering like a starfield, Polinger brings impressive stylistic bite to this tween hellscape: the kind of trenchant intent you might associate with David Fincher. Latecomer Ben (Everett Blunck) is thrown in at the deep end when he arrives. Desperate to ingratiate himself with the cool crowd lorded over by the impish Jake (Kayo Martin), he aims to avoid the pariah status of house lummox Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), who is supposedly afflicted with a (made-up) disease the brats dub “the pla...
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Sick of Myself review – like-chasing narcissist is focus of online fame horror-satire

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A strong lead performance can’t save this unsubtle Norwegian film about a woman who goes too far in chasing social media clout

Kristoffer Borgli’s body-horror satire has had some enthusiastic reviews since it premiered at Cannes last year; I found the Norwegian film unsubtle and unrewarding, exhaustingly implausible on a basic realist level, and containing a jarring obviousness which makes its supposed commentary on society and celebrity all but valueless.

It does, however, have a strong lead performance from Kristine Kujath Thorp, who plays Signe, a young woman in Oslo who is in an uneasy relationship with Thomas (Eirik Sæther), an insufferably conceited conceptual artist creating sculptures from stolen office furniture. In her peevish and snippy way, Signe is toxically jealous of Thomas’s status and prestige; she resents her own subordinate position in their friend group as his girlfriend and her humiliatingly lowly job as a coffee shop barista. There is a weird echo here of Joachim Trier’s incomparably superior The Worst Person in the World, and Sick of Myself features a droll cameo from Trier’s key player, Anders Danielsen Lie.

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