The Dirties directed by and starring Matt Johnson and Owen Williams is an unnerving character study of a school shooter told mostly as a black comedy. It's an extremely clever little film made in a found footage style and Matt Johnson especially is really excellent in it.
We follow the two leads Matt and Owen as they begin shooting an amateur student film called "The Dirties" for their high school filmmaking class. The story is filled with references to films like the usual suspects and pulp fiction but largely centres around two hitmen killing all the jocks in the school which they have labelled as The Dirties. This core idea was very obviously a reference to the short-films Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made prior to foreshadow their real-life massacre at Columbine on April 20th 1999.
We watch Matt and Owen get ruthlessly bullied throughout the film for being different, nerdy quirky kids, the kind that a lot of us were at that age. Matt is eccentric and odd but doesn't come across at first as a bad person and certainly not a monster, if you know what its like to feel different at that age you feel for him. Owen is a little more well integrated with others, he is awkward around girls, shy, clearly very sensitive and compassionate. While making their film Matt floats the idea of filming an actual shooting.
At first it's taken as a joke, you can tell Owen really believes that his friend is only posturing, dealing with the humiliation they're experiencing in his own unique way and so he half heartedly goes along with it, until it becomes abundantly clear that there are some very significant differences between the two boys but by that time it is far too late.
This is one of the best films made about the subject because of how the topic is approached. We get to know these kids, empathise with them, laugh with them and care about them. Until at around the half way mark there's a shift in tone and the reality of the situation begins to seep in. We are watching Matt lose his grip on reality and become dissociated and completely manic and unhinged.
The filmmakers perfectly depicted the psychosocial issues which directly contribute to the issue of mass shootings. Those being, Hyper vigilance as a result of bullying, severe mental health predominately including experiences of dissociation and progressive desensitisation to the idea of committing real life violence, lack of social support and awareness of those close to the individual of their plan, and lastly easy access to firearms.
It masterfully covers all of this and while doing so is able to be both completely convincing in its presentation and for the first half of the film really endearing and funny.
That is an extremely hard thing to manage given the awful nature of the subject matter.
Really excellent film and I recommend anyone who is interested in this subject to watch it.
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