5 Years Before ‘The Long Walk,’ Charlie Plummer Starred in This Explosively Topical Horror Comedy

Following a stacked summer of hotly anticipated film releases, The Long Walkis one of this month’s most exciting new movies, and the hype is due in no small part to just some of the major names behind the project. Adapted from one of Stephen King‘s novels written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym and teasing yet another memorable Mark Hamill role involving neither lightsabers nor sadistic laughter, the film also features a stacked cast of young up-and-comers. Set in a harrowing future where teenage boys compete for a cash prize at the end of a walking marathon, where the punishment for slowing down is death, the film promises to explore the dark intersection between adolescent horror and social dystopia, which is oddly familiar territory for fans of one of the would-be walkers, Charlie Plummer.

Charlie Plummer Brought the Trauma of Innocence Lost to ‘Spontaneous’

Before taking on the role of Gary Barkovitch in the latest King adaptation, Plummer actually starred in another story about teenagers whose normal lives devolve into a traumatic bloodbath. Directed by Brian Duffield and released almost five years ago, 2020’s Spontaneousis the tale of Katherine Langford‘s Mara Carlyle, a high school senior at Covington High whose carefree life is suddenly shattered when one of her classmates spontaneously bursts in the middle of class. At first written off as a one-off tragedy, tensions heighten when more members of Mara’s senior class gradually begin exploding into buckets of blood out of nowhere, leading to what is dubbed the ‘Covington Curse’ as parents, the public, and the American government all scramble to get to the bottom of why their children are facing such an unpredictable and terrifying horror at school.

Plummer plays Dylan in Spontaneous, one of Mara’s classmates who soon becomes something more when, in the aftermath of the first death, he goes out on a limb and confesses to his longtime crush on her over text. Even though Duffield’s film is largely Langford’s show, Plummer features just as prominently throughout most of the film, and his contributions are notable both on a professional and thematic level. In the case of the former, Plummer’s skill as an actor accustomed to coming-of-age stories like Looking for Alaska and Words on Bathroom Walls really shines through in Spontaneous, and the characters’ chemistry with Langford carries the pair’s onscreen relationship. Likewise, Dylan’s innocent desire to act on his feelings after the Covington Curse reminds him of his own mortality, lending Spontaneous its sweetest subplot, as well as a level of teenage wholesomeness necessary to the darker scope of the film’s overall messaging.

Five Years Later, ‘Spontaneous’ Has Lost None of Its Bitter Relevance

As one would expect of a story that revolves around the sporadic deaths of random teenagers, Mara and Dylan’s relationship enters its own volatile territory once confronted by the curse’s true effects, and the tonal shift that accompanies this development is what makes Spontaneous such a special film. On one hand, the movie makes clear that the cause of its bodily explosions isn’t what is important to the narrative. There is, for instance, no sci-fi explanation or serious screentime allocated to locating a fantastical source for the terror of Covington High’s senior class. Instead, Spontaneous isolates and emphasizes the feeling of living under the constant threat of unpredictable, horrific violence in high school, as well as the gut-wrenching grief that naturally accompanies trying to survive and move forward in life after enduring the most absurdly disturbing circumstances imaginable.

As many viewers and reviewers noticed when Spontaneous first released, these deep emotional threads both perfectly represent the experience of growing up in the age of school shootings in America, making Duffield’s film one of the rare coming-of-age high school films actually brave enough to accurately point out the ongoing trauma of an exhausted generation. Sadly, this representation still has yet to translate into action. As most Americans know, gun violence in schools has not gone away, and as the recent attacks in Evergreen and Minneapolis prove, it doesn’t appear to be ebbing anytime soon. As a result, the atmosphere of expectant terror that defines Spontaneous is set to remain in the bodies and hearts of the next generation. That said, Plummer’s role in the film also demonstrates the natural charm and innocence he can bring to the latest of King’s horrors to be put onscreen, proving that at least some children get to grow up and live their dreams.