The Dirties (2014): In cinemas June 6th

The Dirties (2014)
Directed by: Matthew Johnson
Written by: Evan Morgan, Matthew Johnson
Starring: Krista Madison, Matt Johnson, Owen Williams

Matt (Matt Johnson) and Owen (Owen Williams) are film obsessed best friends just trying to get through high school, where they are relentlessly bullied. They make a student film entitled The Dirties, where they get their revenge on their bullies. After further bullying, Owen and Matt joke about making a sequel where they film themselves actually shooting their bullies in high school. Matt laughs it off and starts pursuing a high school crush but Owen takes the idea a little too seriously and starts planning for their very own high school shooting.

The film works well in its presentation of the characters and their everyday lives. Matt and Owen gel together well and truly feel like real friends and the bullying that they suffer also feels realistic. You do feel an empathy towards them and the struggle that they have to go through at school, and their outsider status is well rounded out. The film is also steeped in movie references, play spot the movie title sequence during the end credits, and Matt and particularly Owen are film obsessives and you buy into their passion for the medium. Owen especially is someone who has turned to his movie obsession to cope with his unhappiness at school and finds it difficult to draw the line between fiction and real life. It is interesting to see his slowly unravelling psychology and how he convinces himself that what he is doing is right, even to the extent that he suggests wearing a t shirt and shouting out to the other students that they are ‘only there for the bad guys’ when they go to shoot their bullies. The film has a good and realistic handle on how bullying can slowly chip away at someone, making their life a depressing and painful place. The bullying tends to happen almost randomly, interrupting happier moments of Matt and Owen joking together or just minding their own business at school. The film also ably shows the changes that can happen in friendships and relationships during this stage of life and how friends can drift apart as some move on and how not everything stays the same. Matt and Owen’s friendship starts to fracture as Matt starts to pursue and hang out with Chrissie (Krista Maddison), which Owen almost seems to see as a betrayal.

The main problem with the film is the cameras point of view. The film is shot in the handheld v?rit? style and so partially tries to sell that there is another person holding the camera, though a nameless and dialogueless person, and who is filming everything that Matt and Owen do, with Owen occasionally acknowledging that there is someone behind the camera, whether it is offering them popcorn or just talking directly to camera while on his own. Owen is even seen editing some of the footage of the film to make up his film later in the film. The conceit to this would be that this then makes the audience complicit in the unfolding story, idly watching as Matt and Owen are bullied and as Owen’s plan plays out. By standing by we are not stopping the inevitable downfall. However, where this conceit falls down is that a person, or even two people as sometimes there are multiple set up angles on the same scene, cannot be getting the shots or filming everything as a character in the narrative and once you notice this then the style becomes distracting and takes you out of the movie rather than drawing you in. This in turn dulls any impact that the film is attempting to set up, particularly at the end where events don’t have the dramatic weight or shock that they should otherwise have. The topic of shootings and bullying in high school in America is currently a very prominent one, sadly it seems barely a month goes by without another school shooting taking place, and The Dirties attempts to address the issue from the viewpoint of the shooters, looking at their reasons and motivations, which is an interesting angle but unfortunately the film doesn’t hold the weight of the issue unlike other films on the topic such as the documentary Bowling for Columbine or Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, itself another film that is referenced in The Dirties.

The Dirties is an interesting further take on the ongoing issue of high school shootings and bullying in America. However, despite solid performances and a naturalistic feel to the main characters’ lives it lacks the dramatic and narrative weight in its conclusion that it should have.

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