The Dirties is a found footage film about two bullied high school friends and film lovers, Matt and Owen. The two are working on a project for a film class, but the project changes as the bullying intensifies. I have a weakness for found footage films, and The Dirties is critically acclaimed. While I thought The Dirties was far better and more relatable in terms of character depiction than Zero Day, another found footage film that tackles friendships between teenage boys and the dangers of it becoming toxic, I would not recommend The Dirties because I lost interest in it after 45 minutes.
What makes The Dirties work is the interaction between the two friends. I think that The Dirties realistically showed how the friends began to separate, but when it happened, The Dirties solely focused on Matt, and that decision makes sense considering the plot’s trajectory, but Owen’s break with his buddy is too complete instead of gradually increasing. It is almost as if Owen changed overnight, which is not exactly how The Dirties depicts it, but Owen’s absence in the second half of the film is not only noticeable, but it leaves us following a character that is more interesting when he interacts with someone else.
It is possible that I am completely wrong about the following, but The Dirties suggests that Matt and Owen have a friend that is holding the camera although the two do not always use a cameraman and place hidden cameras in static locations. In one scene, they offer popcorn to the cameraman. This cameraman never talks or interacts with them, which is fine if the cameraman was a professional, but as a fellow teenager seemed unlikely and disrupted the found footage feeling of the film for me.
Most fictional films operate with the unspoken rule that the characters are just living, and film magically captures events as if there was no cameraman because the cameraman is not a character, not a plot point and has no effect on the events of the film. Movies traffic in the fiction of an invisible cameraman although there would be no movie without a cameraman. Actors constantly have to be aware of the cameraman’s presence. The tools of the trade have to be invisible to avoid disrupting the viewer’s suspension of disbelief that the events on the screen are happening. In contrast, found footage films do the opposite to create more credibility and relatability with the viewers. The Dirties is a found footage film, but uses the same narrative style of a fictional film where there is no observer effect, and the act of observation does not affect what is being observed. I did not like the dissonance of the clashing narrative styles, and it ruined the story for me, which is a shame because I genuinely empathized with the two characters that The Dirties did show.
The Dirties was adored by Kevin Smith so if you have similar tastes as Smith, you are a fan of found footage film or are interested in depictions of how teenage boys cope with bullying, you should definitely check it out, but I would skip it.