Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Urchin’ on Hulu, Harris Dickinson’s Gripping Realist Drama Featuring a Committed Frank Dillane Performance

By John Serba

Gripping indie drama Urchin (now streaming on Hulu) is the memorable behind-the-camera debut for Babygirl and Triangle of Sadness star Harris Dickinson. It debuted to not-insignificant acclaim, winning the FIPRESCI prize at its Cannes 2025 debut, while star Frank Dillane took home the Un Certain Regard award for Best Actor. Best known for his roles in Fear the Walking Dead and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dillane plays a homeless man trying to curtail his drug addiction, which, coupled with Dickinson’s immediate, you-are-there realist style, renders it a film and performance that’s tough to shake. 

URCHIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: We meet Mike (Dillane) coming to on a narrow patch of London sidewalk. He groggily rights himself. Fetches his backpack from behind some trash bins. Begs for change on a streetcorner. Dozes off in a diner as he charges his phone, and gets kicked out. He seems wired, jittery, like he just got high or needs a fix. He finds a spot, apparently on top of a building, where he spreads out some flattened cardboard boxes, unrolls a sleeping bag and sleeps for the night. This may be his routine; eventually, we’ll learn he’s been living on the streets for five years.

Mike approaches another desperate and likely homeless man, Nathan (Dickinson). Mike accuses him of stealing his wallet. They scuffle on the sidewalk, wrestling, rolling on the ground. A passerby, Simon (Okezie Morro), breaks it up. Mike gets his wallet back and Nathan angrily points out that Mike didn’t have any money anyway. Simon picks Mike up. Leads him away. Asks if he’s OK. Offers to help. Mike says there’s a bagel place a short walk away. Simon’s concern seems earnest and as he talks about “a gap of empathy” in modern society he’s bludgeoned by irony as Mike suckerpunches him, knocks him down, steals his watch and money. Mike races to pawn the watch for 40 bucks and barely gets out the door of the shop before he’s arrested and taken to the police station and strip-searched and booked. He takes a shower and the camera stares down at the drain and follows the water deep, deep, deep down into darkness populated by what seem to be microscopic organisms then back out of a cave in a mossy forest and into a cavern where Mike stands in a beam of light.

Perhaps that’s a place of psychological retreat for Mike while he’s in prison. Cut to his release several months later. He meets with his parole officer, where he shares that his family life is “complicated.” Mike’s directed to a hostel where he can sleep and a hotel restaurant where he can work, and just as he shares his hope to someday start a chauffeur business the officer interrupts him and fields a call, and it’s the first of several times in this film that someone in authority sort of helps him but ultimately doesn’t see him as a priority. Mike’s in a better place now – he’s a good worker, he seems to get something out of self-help meditation tapes, and he stays clean. He goes to karaoke with a couple of coworkers and has a great, sober time with them. But he has a meeting to attend – a counselor has arranged a sit-down with Simon to discuss the repercussions of Mike’s actions. Prior to, Mike’s a bit manic; but during, his nervous, childlike energy turns into a weirdly vacant stillness. He retreats. Again.

Photo: Everett Collection

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Urchin’s realist style is in the same vein as hyperfocused character studies like Fish Tank and Half Nelson, with a subtle nod to Taxi Driver.

Performance Worth Watching: Wiry and tousled, Dillane shows full commitment to character, never pulling focus. Take the moment where he stands shirtless in front of the mirror and puts up his dukes as if pantomiming a fight, and it invokes Taxi Driver, albeit less malevolent, more childlike and ultimately more self-destructive.

Sex And Skin: Brief nudity; a masturbation scene.

Photo: Everett Collection

Our Take: I spent significant time puzzling over Urchin, specifically Dillane’s characterization, trying to determine Mike’s level of self-awareness. There are moments when he seems to be right on the cusp of some kind of breakthrough, but chooses to withdraw instead of opening up or confronting the repercussions of his actions. The sit-down between Mike and Simon is the film’s dramatic pivot point, staged as a moment of necessary catharsis or closure for the victim of violence – and that’s when the film floats a knotty moral assertion, that the perpetrator is just as traumatized by the incident. He compartmentalizes, pushing away intrusive thoughts that inevitably come back with a vengeance.

So: How deeply in the “gap of empathy” do you want to sit? It’s a test of sorts, to push past the surface-level notion of crime and punishment, to the reasons behind the crime, which range from mental illness and addiction to the social system that offers bare-minimum support and is populated with people who, again, be they indifferent, emotionally hardened or simply overworked, just don’t see people like Mike as a priority.

Dickinson’s tone is observational, framing Mike as a subject of study. But it’s never cold. When Mike sits uncomfortably across from Simon and essentially shrinks into himself, it’s a silent tragedy. He unravels in subsequent scenes, with his kitchen supervisor calling what happens “this up-and-down business.” Mike gets fired, gets a job emptying trash bins in parks, meets people who are kind, even affectionate toward him. But he doesn’t share his struggles, instead emotionally isolating himself and inciting a spiral toward self-destruction. The film becomes a depiction of physical and psychological violence and its repercussions, and a condemnation of a society that pushes people to the margins. Harrison shows vision beyond the melodrama, balancing bracing realism with surrealist, dreamlike sequences that push us to interpret the symbolic alongside the literal. Either way, Mike’s place in this world is terribly tenuous.

Our Call: Too bad Dickinson is tied up for a while playing John Lennon in four Beatles movies – his skill and talent behind the camera are significant. Patience, then, for his next directorial effort. STREAM IT. 

How To Watch Urchin

If you’re new to Hulu, you can get started with a 30-day free trial on the streamer’s basic (with ads) plan. After the trial period, you’ll pay $10.99/month. If you want to upgrade to Hulu ad-free, it costs $18.99/month.

If you want to stream even more and save a few bucks a month while you’re at it, we recommend subscribing to one of the Disney+ Bundles, all of which include Hulu. These bundles start at $12.99/month for ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu and goes up to $32.99/month for Disney+, Hulu, and Max, all ad-free.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.