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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Deadpool’s obnoxious gay panic humour is a tiresome schoolyard taunt

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This summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine uses the superhero’s alleged pansexuality as queerbait, but turns it into a punchline

Even by the standards of opportunistic franchise cross-pollination that has fed the superhero film genre in recent years, Deadpool & Wolverine is a business merger disguised as a movie: two Marvel Comics characters previously under the jurisdiction of 20th Century Studios, now folded into the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Disney in the wake of the company’s 2019 acquisition of Fox. What fun! For the stern, steel-fingered Wolverine, this union entails more of an identity compromise than glib jokester Deadpool – a character already well-versed in the kind of wink-wink irony the MCU trades in. Co-written by Ryan Reynolds himself, Shawn Levy’s film certainly feels a more obvious extension of the first two Deadpool films than any of Wolverine’s previous vehicles. Played with an air of grizzled get-the-job-done exhaustion by Hugh Jackman, the latter often feels like an accessory to a louder, lewder protagonist.

For an MCU that has, in its post-Avengers era, increased its focus on minority representation and inclusivity, Deadpool brings more to the table than the hetero-masculine Wolverine. Introduced into the Marvel comics stable in 1992, the character was conceived as openly pansexual. “[Deadpool’s] brain cells are in constant flux,” explained Fabien Nicieza, Deadpool’s co-creator, on Twitter back in 2015. “He can be gay one minute, hetero the next, etc. All are valid.” Citing neurodivergence to explain a character’s sexuality may not be radically progressive, but in the world of mainstream superheroism, queer fans will take what scraps they can get.

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