The Dirties (2013)

As I've said before, I have a weakness for 'school shooting' movies so I generally try to check out anything along those lines. "The Dirties" kept me genuinely entertained, despite the 'mock-doc' style that I hate and has also already been done with this type of thing with the 2003 movie, "Zero Day". That, along with the dry comedic elements in "The Dirties", it all came together surprisingly well, I'd say.

A pair of teenage outcasts are making a parody-infused film project for one of their classes that involves them heroically murdering certain teachers and student bullies (whom they refer to as "dirties"...) around their school. They're forced to cut out the violence and obscenity which gives one of the boys the idea to switch the film over from a humorous action/'crime thriller' piece to a documentary of an actual school shooting, perpetrated by non other than them. As the mastermind behind the plan strategizes for the big massacre, the other kid can't seem to take the project seriously and a rift in their friendship deepens when he ditches out on the plan for the hot, popular girl...

Strong points of the film include the performances of the two leads, which are actually very believable considering an aptitude of 'quirkiness' - although it never goes too over-the-top with it. The pacing is spot-on and the faux-doc method - while pointless, as usual - never really gets in the way, as I far as I'm concerned. The outcome is satisfying while not playing out as the all encompassing bloodbath you may expect. Don't expect anything along the lines of Gus Van Sant's "Elephant", as far as containing a cold, protracted campus genocide, but it's not without an enjoyable payoff. I also liked the less-than-subtle correlation between high school bullies and future authoritarians by having one of the lead teenage aggressors wearing a black T-shirt with big white letters reading "POLICE" in several scenes.

"The Dirties" is another astringent and brazen statement on adolescent bullying that, like William Hellfire and Joey Smack's 1999 post-Columbine (by just a few months...) massacre film, "Duck! The Carbine High Massacre", peppers humor into it's apropos message as a more inflammatory means of shedding light on the repercussions of ongoing schoolyard torture.