URCHIN Review: Harris Dickinson's Unflinching Debut Shows How Addiction Devours the Vulnerable

Mike (Frank Dillane) wakes to the sound of a woman preaching, her voice rousing him from the sidewalk: "There is a God that loves us all." As this ragged young man pulls himself off the pavement -- discarded on society's fringes -- he moves like someone who hasn't felt that love in a long time.

That's where Urchin, Harris Dickinson's directorial debut, picks up: with Mike adrift in London, wandering streets that treat him like background noise. The people of the city pass by him. If kindness finds him, it's fleeting, seen first in a restaurant that lets him charge his phone as he drifts off to sleep, only to be shoved out moments later. Just before the title card, he ends the night alone in an abandoned building, then starts again the next day. Dickinson's restrained tone underpins the despair, the almost routine cruelty where the city overlooks the unhoused.

Dickinson observes Mike without any gilding. The film's gaze is empathetic but unsparing, recognizing the tenderness of Mike's pain and the self-inflicted wounds that sustain it. In this way, Urchin emerges as a deft, devastating study of self-sabotage and addiction, tracing the cycles of anger and inertia that trap him. The result makes for a remarkable debut, fixated on an unglorified, tragic spiral.

At first, Mike is portrayed as kind-hearted. Even with his dejected demeanor, he emits an oddly charming exterior, evident as he sips a beer and chats with various people at a soup kitchen. This exterior cracks slightly when he realizes his wallet is missing, immediately beelining to confront Nathan (Dickinson), another addict framed as a sort of foil for our protagonist. The two fight, and Mike retrieves his now-empty wallet. You feel bad for Mike, depleted and desperate.

A well-intentioned man who intervenes to stop the fight, Simon (Okezie Morro), offers to buy him some food. Mike agrees, joining the man on a stroll, where they talk about the increasing gap between those who succeed and fail in society's eyes. As soon as they enter the cover of a bridge, Mike throws a sidewinder, knocking out Simon and stealing his expensive watch. He sprints directly to a pawn shop, frantically trying to offload the stolen merchandise. After this brisk, heart-pounding sequence, Mike is arrested by the police and thrown in jail for about eight months.

Dickinson throws in a bold, strangely affective hallucinogenic transition to signify the time jump. This scene, featuring floating galaxy-germ-like forms and a man standing alone in an echoey cave, does enough to convey the psychic shift that occurs when getting sober.

When Mike is released, he is clean and genuinely appears ready to start his life (again).
His parole officer arranges for him to be set up in a hostel, where he listens to motivational tapes alone. He gets a job as a cook in a roadside hotel named City View Lodge.

At this point, he's almost bright-eyed and optimistic, making us wonder if the turbulence we witnessed before still lingers beneath the surface. This is particularly true in one scene, where he joins two of his coworkers on a night out (he stays sober), singing "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten for Karaoke, and dancing on the top level of a parking garage. It's pure, but most of all, it's hopeful.

It's a remarkable feat on Dillane's part --to make us believe, if only for a moment, that everything might be okay. Dillane is perhaps best known for playing a 16-year-old Tom Riddle (Voldemort) in the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), if not for his stint on Fear the Walking Dead (2015-23).

Here, the actor demonstrates his capability for drama. His performance aches, as Mike confronts the discomfort that accompanies sobriety. But he plays this with restraint, not exaggerating the pains and turmoils of addiction. Instead, it's extremely personal, filled with the same care one might have watching a loved one struggle with addiction.

This is largely thanks to Urchin's resolute directness. It's anchored by Dillane's caring performance and the seasoned cinematography of Josée Deshaies. In all, Dickinson binds us to Mike without it feeling invasive or forced.

Dillane and Dickinson roll out Mike's redemption arc, and the path looks smooth enough. Yet, the veneer of Mike's new life ruptures in a series of inconveniences or hard truths. His ability to handle change pushes him onto wobbly territory: a confrontation with a (truthfully) lazy co-worker and his time at his provincial hostel running out.

The hard exterior -- a shell he augmented for five years living on the streets -- reemerges during a government-scheduled confrontation with Simon, when the two are meant to reconcile. Mike, unable to process the guilt, recedes into himself, and in that silence, we see him pop at the seams.

The rest of the film traces Mike's gradual unraveling. He encounters a woman, Andrea (Megan Northam), a free spirit who lives nomadically in her van. A brief romance offers a counterpoint to Mike's life, which feels perpetually lodged between diametric ideas of success and failure. Is there an alternative?

Perhaps. But, in the end, Mike cannot step away from his own tragic carousel. Confronted with hardship, with change, with responsibility, he defaults to the safety of his addiction. Much like the obvious comparison, Mike Leigh's Naked (1993), there is something existential and matter-of-fact about this. It's a brutal truth, where each hopeful glimmer is easily devoured by pain and, with that, addiction.

The despair in Urchin is punctuated by some softness. Dickinson seems to understand how tenderness and ruin can coexist in the wake of personal loss. The film rarely strays from its calm, observational gaze. Mike's inevitable fall feels both anticipated and grieved.

By the end, we return almost to where we began. Then, a surreal rupture sends him spiraling into a starry void, lost and devoured by a universe that seems to forget him as he fades from view.

The film opens in the U.S. on Friday, October 17, only in movie theaters, via 1-2 Special. Visit the film's official site for more information.