Thursday, April 10, 2014

The Dirties (2013)


Director: Matt Johnson
Writers:  Josh Boles, Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Evan Morgan
Cast:       Matt Johnson, Owen Williams

Two best friends in high-school are making a comedy film of them getting revenge on the bullies at their high-school. One of them ain't joking.

The film starts with a statement that it is for mature audiences only and that no footage has been altered. It is made in the documentary style similar to 'Catfish' but in Catfish the filmmaker tried to deceive the audience into thinking that it was real  whereas in this film the fictional element of  the film is always apparent. I don't know whether it is because of me being guarded about it  or the way the film is shot. They even break the fourth wall with the camera that is on them making their film and since no reason is given for them being filmed, somewhat counter intuitively you are always aware it is fictional. 

Even though it delves into graver subject matters like School Shootings and have bullying as the overarching theme I still watched it as a comedy in its entirety and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't know whether that was what exactly the filmmaker was going for but it doesn't matter. It is really a clever film and even though it contains a deluge of references to other films that we love like Usual Suspects, Tarantino films etc, which can be quite cringe-worthy, it pulls it off well. It is something that is being done in Malayalam recently with no great results and I even heard a song recently from fuck knows what film in which the lyrics are made up of funny dialogs from past films.

The end credits is also great to watch with the styles and fonts used from several other films. The film was picked up by Kevin Smith's 'Movie Club' and I hope it gets a wider distribution. It is a great little Canadian film.

Rating: 4.5/5

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