Cult Control and Mental Collapse: Dirty Boy Delivers a Folk-Horror Mind Trip - REVIEW – DIRTY BOY

Travis Brown
6 hours ago
2 min read

A young man stares blankly as cult members loom behind him in dim candlelight. — Isaac Wentworth, unblinking and unraveling—there’s nowhere to run when the cult is inside your head.

Schizophrenia, cults, and chaos collide in this folk-horror fever dream

3.5 out of 5 stars

There’s no easing into Dirty Boy. From the first frame, Doug Rao drops you straight into a fractured world—a cult, a family, a mind—that’s already falling apart. It’s loud, raw, disjointed, and manic, and that’s exactly the point.

At the center is Isaac Wentworth, played with full-body unease by Sten Bichler, a young man with schizophrenia raised inside a polygamist cult that may or may not be framing him for something sinister. Isaac’s world is collapsing—internally and externally—and Rao’s film pulls no punches in showing you just how unreliable his reality has become.

Inside Isaac’s Head

Dirty Boy isn’t interested in exposition or clean worldbuilding. It throws you in, lets you sink or swim, and only occasionally comes up for air. The perspective is Isaac’s, and Rao leans into that hard—blurring moments of clarity with hallucination, peppering in coping mechanisms (like Isaac’s dark sense of humor and endless one-liners), and amplifying every sound, shadow, and awkward glance into something sinister.

The result is intentionally disorienting. You’re meant to feel like you can’t trust anyone—not even the film itself.

Cult Logic & Folk Horror Vibes

There’s an undercurrent of folk horror here, with the cult acting as both literal antagonist and symbolic force. It’s not entirely clear how they operate, how organized they are, or how long they’ve been warping Isaac’s sense of self. That ambiguity adds to the tension—are they evil, or just unhinged? Both?

Honor Gillies is quietly excellent as Hope, the one person in the group who seems to see Isaac for who he really is. Her name might be a little on the nose, but it works. In a film full of manipulation and gaslighting, Hope offers something close to truth—if not salvation.

The supporting cast (Susan Porter, Gavin McTavish, and others) give their all to the world of Dirty Boy, helping to craft a space that feels equal parts isolated, devout, and rotting from within.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot to unpack here, and honestly, it probably needs a second watch. The first time through, you’re trying to find your footing—by the time things start to make sense, the film’s already lit a match and burned it all down.

It’s not clean. It’s not polished. But it is committed. And there’s passion in every failed escape attempt, every manic smile, every unsettling silence.

If you’re into films like Martha Marcy May Marlene, Saint Maud, or The Other Lamb, you’ll find something to hold onto in Dirty Boy. But be warned—you won’t leave it clean.