The website's critical consensus reads, "As powerfully acted as it is sensitively told, Dirty God offers a timely story delivered with empathy and deeply affecting grace.

Polak shoots with in-the-moment energy: in hospital wards, at a grime club, in a drab call centre where Jade gets a job to pay for surgery.

"[1] Nikki Baughan of Sight & Sound wrote, "Positively vibrating with barely suppressed pain, rage and injustice, Sacha Polak's Dirty God is both a sharply observed character study and a damning indictment of our skin-deep Instagram culture.

"[7] Hanna Flint of the Time Out wrote, "Polak follows in the footsteps of directors Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank) and Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild) by drawing out a brilliantly nuanced performance from first-time-actor Knight, a burn victim herself.

"[8] Jay Weissberg of the Variety wrote, "Much attention will deservedly be paid to Knight's impressively nuanced performance – it's one thing to cast an amateur who's been through similar experiences, and quite another to get that person to inhabit a fictional character.

Vulnerable, flinty, and unashamedly sexual, Knight's Jade may not be an especially likable person, but she's vibrantly real, and the newcomer brings a forceful physicality and, in her scenes with Robinson, a palpable sensuality.

Director Sacha Polak, co-writing with Susie Farrell, focuses on Jade's valiant and not-so-valiant efforts to rebuild her life and not let her injuries destroy her, but it's hard not to get bogged down in the sadness of every damn detail.