Two best friends are filming a comedy about getting revenge on the bullies at their high school. One of them isn't joking.
Like Chronicle, it's a fresh spin on the high-school flick. Unlike Chronicle, its execution never quite matches its ideas.
Canadian first-timer Matt Johnson’s promising but patchy provocation.
This isn't a film that's particularly easy to enjoy but that doesn't mean that there isn't much here to admire.
The end result isn’t entirely successful, but Johnson does enough to suggest that we might be witnessing the birth of a genuinely talented filmmaker.
Turns what could have been a Scream-style riff on the shaky-cam genre into a more disquieting exploration of the blurred realities of the always-on selfie generation.
Brave, shocking, compelling.
It may wind up as the year's most significant horror film; it's certainly among the most original.
Johnson's film gets confusing and darkens, and reveals itself, not just as a knockabout comedy, but as a serious, thoughtful and all too plausible study of the psychological state in which a young, movie- and self-obsessed North American male might decide to take a gun to his school and start shooting.
The subject of bullying is convincingly depicted, and there's an attempt to grapple with the transition from class clown to killer, but this lacks the depth, emotional clout and (oddly enough) empathy of Gus Van Sant's altogether superior Elephant.
The Dirties director Matt Johnson on fame and high-school shootings
Matt Johnson
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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