Review of The Dirties (2013) by Lovro H — 18 Jun 2017

The Dirties is directed by Matt Johnson who also wrote the script and plays the main role of Matt in the movie. Obviously, this is an independent movie. It was made on a budget of only 10,000$ and it's one of the best found-footage movies.

The story follows two best friends, Matt and Owen (played by Owen Williams), who are in love with the movie industry and they're making a movie about bullying for their class. Everybody else in the class doesn't care much for the movies that they have to make, but Matt and Owen want to make the most epic bullying movie ever.

It seems like quite an innocent story but this movie becomes darker and darker the more you watch it. Matt and Owen are both being bullied and Matt becomes so obsessed with making the movie as real as possible that he starts plotting a school shooting.

Yeah. The movie went there. The subject at the core of the movie may be very dark, but I love how it still manages to be hilarious even in its darkest moments. The two main characters have great chemistry and I loved watching how they film the scenes for their movie.

The direction is alright. I mean, it's a found-footage movie, there can't be much done here. Speaking of that, I don't remember there being a valid explanation as to why is this guy filming Matt and Owen making their movie, filming them at school and whatnot.

I do very much appreciate the great sound design. Usually these found-footage movies are horrible when it comes to sound. You can't hear half of the things that the characters are saying. Thankfuly, The Dirties avoided that in a very clever way.

Since the two main characters are film experts and they film a lot, they have good equipment. They constantly have microphones attached to them and you can hear everything clearly. The acting is great! There weren't any bad actors, I thought.

Matt was especially great! There are some really sinister and disturbing scenes involving him explaining his plans for the movie. What's disturbing isn't necessarily just the things he says, but the way he says them.

He still thinks of everything like it's a movie and that it's not real if it's a movie. So when he's smiling and talking about killing all the bullies with real guns, it's very unsettling.

The ending isn't very unpredictable but even if you see it coming, it's shocking. All in all, I had a lot of fun with The Dirties. It's very funny, very dark and all in all a very interesting take on such a heavy subject.

I would recommend watching this one!