President Trump<\/a>, who frequently uses bullying to set the national tone. Polinger says that although his film is informed by specificity, it can speak broadly to many different cultural touchpoints.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cMy feeling about films in general is, when you\u2019re making something that feels as honest as possible and personal, those things usually apply in larger political ways,\u201d he says. \u201cI think there are dynamics of how bullying works, but also how social hierarchies are developed, and myths are made. \u2018The Plague\u2019 is kind of a myth. In the beginning, it\u2019s clearly a very dumb game and a dumb joke, and it\u2019s not taken very seriously. But because everyone else chooses to take it seriously, because everyone else is doing it, it starts to become something increasingly real because the collective has made it so.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cJake, as a ringleader, will look at you like you\u2019re crazy if you don\u2019t take it seriously,\u201d Polinger continues. \u201cYou want to fit in with Jake because it\u2019s too scary not to have his approval, because he\u2019s so charismatic, and he\u2019s bonding with everyone else by making fun of the outcast. So you don\u2019t want to be that person. You play the rules of the game, and suddenly they become crystallized. I think that paradigm applies to bigger social structures, political things \u2026 in general, authoritarianism. There are cycles of this throughout history that are built around the same human instincts that, hopefully, this film is exploring through a more personal lens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter \u201cThe Plague,\u201d Polinger is set to adapt a high-profile property, helming a feature-length version of Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s short story \u201cThe Masque of the Red Death,\u201d starring Oscar winner Mikey Madison. Polinger is excited to start filming his unique vision of the classic text.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s definitely inspired by the short story, but it goes into a completely new story,\u201d he says. \u201cSo it\u2019s a very bombastic, irreverent, dark comedic tale, set in this medieval, slightly fantastical world. It\u2019s not a modernized version of it at all. It\u2019s high energy, it\u2019s out there and very different in many ways on the surface from \u2018The Plague,\u2019 but also exploring claustrophobic group dynamics \u2014 just from a very different genre and tone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWatch the trailer for \u201cThe Plague\u201d below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSometimes I\u2019m so fucking glad that I never have to be young again.\u201d Film critic David Ehrlich\u2019s brief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[108658,93,61,60,270,1632,108659],"class_list":["post-207558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-charlie-polinger","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-president-trump","tag-the-plague"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}