The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis

Remarkable as much for its insights as for its audacity, The Dirties approaches school violence with a comic veneer that slowly shades into deep darkness.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

The story transitions from a believable portrait of young culture junkies into a showcase of Matt's burgeoning rage so well that it practically implicates viewers in the process.

Los Angeles Times by Inkoo Kang

A masterful blend of black humor and queasy dread.

ScreenCrush by Jordan Hoffman

Engaging this movie is like jumping into the deep end of a cold pool. You just do it and yell for a second, but once you are in you'll want to swim around.

Hitfix by Drew McWeeny

The Dirties feels authentic all the way through, and it carries a bitter punch. It is a slight movie in terms of actual events that happen, but it grapples with some giant ideas and emotions in a very effective way.

Village Voice by Zachary Wigon

Matthew Johnson's The Dirties explores high school violence from a refreshingly original angle.

The Guardian by Mike McCahill

It may wind up as the year's most significant horror film; it's certainly among the most original.

Empire

Like Chronicle, it's a fresh spin on the high-school flick. Unlike Chronicle, its execution never quite matches its ideas.

The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck

The Dirties is as provocative as it is sloppily messy in its themes.

Empire by Andrew Osmond

Like Chronicle, it's a fresh spin on the high-school flick. Unlike Chronicle, its execution never quite matches its ideas.

Total Film by Kevin Harley

As Johnson enters Columbine-style turf, a clearer slant on our modern mindset is required than the one he offers.

The Dissolve by Noel Murray

Ultimately, all the metafictions and social commentary are too vague to have any meaning, beyond giving Johnson a foundational justification for this movie. But while The Dirties is in some ways appalling, it’s also effective.

The Playlist by Drew Taylor

The message, like the filmmaking, seems fuzzy and unfocused.

Variety by Peter Debruge

This sloppy, button-pushing black comedy reveals a crew desperately in need of counseling — less in anger management than in the fundamentals of screenwriting, camerawork and structure.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Technically cruddy and tiresome in its we’ve-seen-a-lot-of-movies dialogue.