Laughing and feeling upset at the same time can be a weird mix of emotions, which is exactly the kind of whirlwind the Canadian- independent mockumentary The Dirties (2013) will take you on while watching it.
Interacting with real people and improvising on screen seems to be Matt Johnson’s specialty, and my god does he do it well! Originating from his mini series Nirvana The Band The Show, The Dirties achieves the same thing. It starts off as a comedy, as we see Matt and Owen work on their school project, making the movie about getting revenge on what they call the bullies “The Dirties”, only one of them takes it slightly too far. We see them act out and reference famous pop culture movies like Pulp Fiction, in order to get their point across.
Once the film is shown to their teacher, who isn’t too impressed with what he sees, he asks them to tone down the violence and swearing. Even though they comply, Matt decides to come up with an idea to really kill The Dirties, to make their movie much more realistic. We see him choose costumes he might wear during the shootings, collecting blue prints of the school and even writing down a list of the names of the bullies. This idea becomes much more serious, after showing their toned down version of their film to the class and then getting bullied right after.
With Matt’s perception of reality beginning to blur from being a loser, to being popular like a celebrity, we see Owen and Matt’s relationship deteriorating after Owen develops a love interest in the popular girl, where he slowly drifts away from Matt.
Filmed in a documentary style, it’s hard to not connect with the characters. It’s engaging to the point that the audience is left to question whether or not what we’re watching is real. We see them edit scenes we had previously watched, Matt communicating to the crew breaking the fourth wall and we also see his psychotic nature form on screen. What is really impressive about this independent movie, however, is that it was Directed and Written by Matt Johnson, who also plays the main character in this movie. The music and pop culture references really highlight the kind of people the characters are and what they’re driven by.
At first I was really uncomfortable with the amount of references this movie made about the Columbine Shootings, as after the events, they had wanted a movie to be made about them. However I was clearly wrong as it is more a comment about society blaming media related sources in school shootings; something that occurred when the Columbine shootings happened. It comments on youth psychology and how the media tends to gloss over the real issue at hand. The fact that Matt was able to get blue prints of his school without even showing his school ID is something that is worrisome.
This Canadian independent movie is a conversation starter of an issue we choose to not talk about – so watch this movie to unleash the conversation.
7/10
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