The Dirties ****
Dir: Matt
Johnson. With: Matt Johnson, Owen Williams. 83 mins. Cert: 15
This Canadian found-footage
item is a tricky one, but stick with it: there’s something very assured in the
way it passes from just north of Jackass
to territory closer to Gus van Sant’s Elephant.
Director Matt Johnson established himself with a series of larky online shorts:
here, he applies the same vérité approach to a tale of two movie-quoting
high-school dorks pledging violent revenge on their tormentors – a plot born
not of psychopathy, but as another, all-too-easy crib from the culture. If it
often resembles Benny’s Video as
remade by the kids from Glee, that
joshing blitheness – the desire to make a statement without appearing to be
making a statement – will only open the film up to wider discussion; in this
post-Elliot Rodger moment, its reference points, and the shifting central
dynamic, ring deeply, uncomfortably true. It may wind up as the year’s most
significant horror film; it’s certainly among the most original.
The Dirties opens in selected cinemas from today.
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