Watched: The Dirties (2013).
Two teenage boys, obsessed with film, make a movie packed full of nerd references for their high school film class in which they hunt down and kill their bullies. It doesn’t help their status; in fact, after their teacher strips out the objectionable content, it serves to make their lives even worse. Soon, it becomes apparent that one of the two is planning to film a sequel, but with potentially horrifying consequences.
There is so much about this that could turn people off. The two protagonists are barely likeable - you find yourself laughing at the jokes, but one character in particular throws around homophobic slurs and casual put-downs, apparently unaware that he’s aping the people who are bullying him in doing so. And it’s a school shooting movie, at its heart, regardless of how real things are. I have a feeling that the audience in America, where school shootings are already a little too common to be absurd (this was written and filmed in Canada), is limited at best.
And yet. So much about the two protagonists reminded me of the people I grew up with; outcasts and loners who, to some degree, turned that outward aggression on each other instead of forming anything resembling a community. My friends and I in high school were largely brought together by shared interests, but there was no tenderness or selflessness there - nothing that you’d expect out of an adult relationship. And we had our own share of dark thoughts, too. None of us did anything, of course, but at two in the morning, kept awake by bruises and bitterness, you couldn’t help but think about revenge.
The film itself is strikingly well-made, too, especially given that the film’s writer, director and star is barely out of high school himself. There’s a documentary style that is convincing while raising the disturbing question of who exactly is filming all of this to the end; the two leads fracture and separate as the film goes on, but the unseen observer with the camera stays throughout, addressed by the lead every now and then, never responding. If anything, it adds another dimension to the whole affair - that for every person you lose when you take things too far, there’ll be another who’s seduced by your cult of personality.