How Look and Music Create a Coming of Age Horror Movie

Foreboding title apart, one might fairly start watching Charlie Polinger’s “The Plague” and assume that it’s a Y.A. coming of age drama— a modern-day “The 400 Blows” or a male “Welcome to the Dollhouse” about a group of teenaged boys spending their summer time at a sleepaway water polo camp. However, as the movie progresses, not only does its narrative get more and more sinister, however the look and really feel of the movie subtly lull the viewers away from a vivacious safety and into the darkest psychological realms of early adolescence.

Because of the film’s water polo camp setting, a lot of it takes place in and round an indoor pool. Anyone who has been to a YMCA in the early morning is aware of the harsh fluorescence of these environments. Accordingly, the movie’s first two acts are brightly lit, showing nearly sterilized at occasions.

In the opening shot, the digital camera is totally submerged in the pool, introducing the first of many underwater photographs as the boys soar into the water, their legs kicking round and disrupting the aquatic stillness. While the swimming pool’s chlorine-washed blue is unmistakable, cinematographer Steven Breckon says that he and Polinger had been making an attempt to keep away from cliched underwater photographs. “The classic underwater shot is a perfume commercial with a woman in flowy drapery clothing and there’s like a God light beam on it,” Breckon tells Variety. “That’s nowhere close to what we wanted this material to look like and we were actually kind of inspired by more of a deep focus, like a painting.”

To obtain the underwater photographs, Breckon explains that the digital camera operator was beneath the floor, receiving directions by audio system. “I could basically talk to him through a giant megaphone speaker that is placed underwater, so it was like garbled instructions and he would just nod the camera ‘yes’ or nod the camera ‘no’ to confirm that he heard me.”

Even as the digital camera turns into less static, circling round the youngsters treading water, coming up and down with seeming serendipity, Breckon says that it was more fastidiously orchestrated than it seems. He says that the digital camera was “on a flotation rig that you can deflate to the perfect level where it’s sort of half in and half out. And by pushing it on the surface through those boys and having all the splashing going on, it has a very chaotic energy,” however, “it was very diagrammed out. There really wasn’t a lot of finding it in the moment because we just had to be so safe with the boys. You know, we had lifeguards on every corner of the frame.”

The sequence’s handheld look is complemented by its sound and score, which synchronously cuts in and out every time the digital camera submerges and resurfaces. “I’m pretty sure that the actual ducking of the sound of the music was done by Damien (Volpe) and Dave (Paterson) in the sound department. But I was there. I went for those sessions,” composer Johan Lenox tells Variety.

While the cinematography slowly morphs from the misleading brightness of a bildungsroman to a darkness of a horror film over the course of the runtime, the music is constantly eerie from the starting, cluing audiences that not all is properly for this group of youngsters. “The music is scary, but it’s also like, insanely weird,” says Lenox. “We wanted to telegraph early that some goofy and insane shit is gonna happen.”

The foreboding vitality is accented by music’s surreal, sometimes liminal qualities.  “You’re just hearing me wailing into this microphone,” Lenox continues, noting that while the music is unusual throughout, there are refined escalations as the film progresses. “I don’t think there’s a string instrument in the first third or half of the movie. And then these gritty, noisy sounds from string instruments start to creep in on top of the vocals and eventually supplant them just as the fun sort of stops,” explains Lenox. “Then also there are these tense swelling drone sounds pushing into these hallways and stuff like that. I think there’s a shorter one early in the movie and then there’s like a fucking three or four minute long one by the end.”

“The Plague”’s sight and sound does have conspicuous breaks from its sinister mildew. Notably, when the youngsters sneak out at night time partway by the movie, a handheld lengthy take captures them partying in an alley.

“That’s probably the scene that’s the most extreme version of what I describe as ‘the sandbox,’” says Breckon. “There’re these broad strokes that were very set up and diagrammed out, but then within that, it’s just chaos, letting them go every which way. In terms of actually approaching it, I was trying my best to get us to commit to a 180 degree plus area, thinking we’ll flip around and get the other side, but the kids were going in circles and doing everything, so it very quickly became a 360 area and that posed some challenges. As a cinematographer, you want everybody to be in the back light, and you don’t want moments of too much front light. So I was trying to keep up with that scene as it was unfolding in front of us, but there was no version of me being like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up. This isn’t the way that I want it to look.’ Instead, it was like, ‘No, the kids are telling us what it needs to be.’”

The scene reaches a crescendo when one of the boys pops a CD into a increase box and an Italian pop tune performs. While the tune might simply be mistaken for an obscure, however becoming needle drop, it’s still an authentic piece composed by Lenox for the movie. “Let’s fucking write our own thing. Like, why not?” displays Lenox, appreciating how that the movie’s “sonic world is 90% of one thing and then this other thing that comes in. It’s intentional. It could not be more opposite to everything else. I really like it as a structure and shape.”

The tune is titled “Corsa Notturna” and it options Italian vocals from a little one. It is some of the only vocals in the soundtrack that don’t belong to Lenox himself. The tune returns as soon as more at the end of the movie, in a dance sequence that as soon as again showcases progressive digital camera methods.

As the main character dances freely, we spin with him until a distinctive impact takes maintain and it appears as if the rotation is constant while seamlessly chopping between the boy and his revolving potential. Breckon, however, explains that the shot was not minimize in any respect. The team created a rotating six-sided mirror that the actor was stationary inside of, permitting him to intermittently seem in the reverse shot while sustaining the outward-facing round movement.

“As he becomes part of the image, and it goes from the people looking at him to just him, he’s actually slowing down. He’s not himself spinning anymore, and he’s starting to take stock of the situation in the moment, but its contrasted by the fact that this mirror is spinning faster and faster,” says Breckon. It is a transfixing impact that closes the movie, successfully encapsulating the story’s dizzying method to self-acceptance.

The influences for “The Plague” are manifold. Between Breckon and Lenox, they point out taking inspiration from “Raw,” “Carrie” and “The Shining,” however also “Full Metal Jacket,” “8 ½” “The Dark Knight” and “Superbad” to form the look and sound. The result is one thing wholly distinctive: a coming-of-age horror film that explores the social, psychological and bodily viscerality of rising up.

“The Plague” debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May. IFC acquired its distribution rights in August and will release the movie in theaters on Dec. 24.