There is a specific, uncomfortable texture to the London of Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut, "Urchin." It isn’t just the grey damp of the Dalston streets or the fluorescent hum of a probation office; it is the sticky, claustrophobic sensation of a life that refuses to move forward. For years, Dickinson has been one of Britain’s most magnetic screen presences—from the raw vulnerability of Beach Rats to the sharp satire of Triangle of Sadness. With Urchin, he steps behind the camera not with the vanity of an actor looking for a new hobby, but with the assured, bruising vision of a filmmaker who has something urgent to say about the people we step over on our way to the tube.
The film follows Mike a young man who has spent five years sleeping rough, suspended in a cycle of addiction and erratic survivalism. When we meet him, he is a coil of nervous energy—twitchy, charming, and dangerous. Dickinson makes the brave choice to deny us a tragic backstory. We don’t know whose son Mike is or exactly where he fell from; we only know the gravity of his present.
After a violent, impulsive mugging lands him in prison and subsequently a restorative justice program, the film teases a redemption arc. Mike gets a job as a commis chef in a hotel; he stays sober; he even belts out Atomic Kitten at a karaoke night in a sequence of such desperate, euphoric joy it threatens to break your heart. But Urchin is too honest to let the melody last. Dickinson understands that the tragedy of homelessness isn’t just the lack of a roof, but the erosion of the self. The system—personified by a well-meaning but exhausted probation officer—can offer structure, but it cannot cure the vertigo of returning to a world that has learned to exist without you.
What elevates Urchin above the crowded genre of British social realism is Dickinson’s refusal to stay in the kitchen-sink lane. He injects the film with a surreal, almost feverish visual language. As Mike’s grip on his new reality loosens, the film cuts to recurring images of a moss-covered, womb-like cave—a damp, subterranean space that feels less like a sanctuary and more like a psychological trap. It’s a bold swing, risking pretension, but it largely lands, suggesting that for Mike, the pull of the lower depths is as spiritual as it is chemical.
Dillane is the engine that drives this. He plays Mike not as a victim to be pitied, but as a frustrating, complex human being who creates chaos because chaos is the only language he is fluent in. There is a scene involving a restorative justice meeting with his victim where Mike, utterly unable to perform the contrition expected of him, exposes the gap between bureaucratic empathy and actual healing. It is excruciating to watch, and utterly brilliant. Dickinson also steps in for a small, unglamorous role as Nathan, an old street friend of Mike’s, and the chemistry between them is tragic—a reminder that in Mike’s world, friendship is often a liability.
The film is not without the stumbling blocks of a first feature. The pacing in the second act occasionally sags under the weight of its own atmosphere, and the symbolism of the cave can sometimes feel slightly heavy-handed compared to the razor-sharp precision of the dialogue. Yet, these are minor gripes in a work of such palpable texture.
"Urchin" leaves you not with a message, but a feeling—a lingering dampness, a sense of how easy it is to slip through the cracks, and how terrifyingly hard it is to climb back out. It is a confident, muscular debut that announces Harris Dickinson as a director who demands we look closer at the things we’d rather ignore.
8/10
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