The Blair Witch School Shooting Elephant Project. Two nerdy kids enjoy making videos for school, videos involving too much sweary violence and too many blatant rip-offs of their favorite movie scenes. Their teacher tries to get them to tone it down, but they keep ramping up, filming a story of two kids (themselves) taking revenge on the Dirties (school bullies). Inevitably, one of the two takes this to the next level, sets up cameras in the school hallways and shoots some guys, while his companion tries to escape the scene.

Owen is the more normal one, crushing on a girl named Chrissy instead of devoting all his time to firing practice and bully identification like his friend Matt (played by director Johnson). There’s a third (never seen?) boy named Jared who’s filming a documentary of Matt & Owen – his presence is sometimes noted but usually not, and he appears to be present during the actual shooting, which was inspired as much by school shootings in the news as cult movies. So our The Dirties is his documentary footage, mixed with the stuff Owen and Matt film, plus their The Dirties uncompleted feature.

Watched this because of the excellent Cinema Scope interview with the director:

Matt is always feeling the camera. And he’s not alone. The concept of always seeing the camera and always feeling like you’re on camera is a very modern problem. And by “problem,” I don’t even necessarily mean that it’s a negative thing — this is just something that we need to consider. Kids these days are always filming themselves and they’re always acting like they’re on TV. Matt is just a guy that has actively put himself on TV 24/7. So he’s always trying to perform. And he can’t break the spell because he’s made this rule for himself of performing.

Johnson believes that realistic performances are paramount, so instead of casting actors for small roles, he performs the movie in public spaces.

All you’re seeing in The Dirties is just a lot of really good acting from people who don’t know that they’re acting. … The closest thing is something like Borat, but we’re not making fun of people here. We’re the stupid ones. I’m always the one who doesn’t know what’s going on. … That old man who walks up when Owen gets hit with a rock is the same kind of example. It’s not even a joke, that moment, it’s simply reality. The old man was just there, and didn’t know what was going on. The joke is on us.