Rao’s slow-burning horror may not appeal to everyone, as it gradually reveals the secrets of the ‘flock.’ But for those willing to stick by Isaac’s side, Rao’s movie offers a bold, intelligent, at times daring, and always intriguing dissection of the horrors that so often hide behind a prayer book and cross.
As writer and director Doug Rao wraps up his puzzle box movie Dirty Boy, his main protagonist, twenty-year-old Isaac, says, “What’s the difference between a church and an insane asylum? A church is where you go to talk to God, and an insane asylum is where you go if he replies.”
For years, Isaac, played by the brilliant Stan Steinbichler, has struggled with his mental health and the divided personality that has led his ‘flock’ to lock him up and feed him drugs in their closed religious community deep in the Austrian Alps. All that time, he thought he was the problem. But, his closed and insular cult, where women are trafficked in for ‘breeding,’ and the outside world is kept firmly at a distance, holds far more horrors than Isaac can imagine, and he is about to blow the doors off their horrific commune in spectacular style!
Rao’s slow-burning horror may not appeal to everyone, as it gradually reveals the secrets of the ‘flock’ in a dystopian landscape where the modern technology of the outside world contrasts with the 1930s clothing of the ‘cult.’ But for those willing to stick by Isaac’s side, Rao’s movie offers a bold, intelligent, at times daring, and always intriguing dissection of the horrors that so often hide behind a prayer book and cross.
Dirty Boy is playing in selected cinemas now.
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