Something in the Dirt (2022) - Movie Review

What do you get when this site’s favorite filmmakers decide to make a film during the Covid lockdown of 2020?

One of my favorite films ever made.

Let’s discuss.

Something in the Dirt is the newest collaboration between director Aaron Moorhead and writer / director Justin Benson, the visionary minds behind Spring, The Endless, and one of the few Marvel projects I’ve enjoyed recently—Moon Knight. And true to form, they deliver another mind bending, but wholly original piece of fiction. It’s part rockumentary, part black comedy, and all science fiction—but also true to form, all is not what it appears to be.

This is not a film for people who like things to be explained to them. This is a film to be witnessed and experienced. I’m not saying this is something that Salvador Dali would have made, but it’s a similar idea. Film as an art, sans any politics or agenda is meant to be consumed, enjoyed, pondered.

It’s an art form that used to be used to challenge convention. To tell stories too big or too outlandish to be staged in the round.

This is why I love these filmmakers. They make timeless films that anyone can watch and enjoy.

And while The Endless and Spring are universally lauded as small budget masterpieces, Something in the Dirt is much more divisive.

The film focuses on a bartender named Levi as he begins his plan to leave Los Angeles. He’s sold all of his possessions and moved into a seedy, flyby night apartment where he meets John, a wedding photographer with a generous streak. John helps Levi out by gifting him some furniture left behind by his ex and as the pair move the couch into the apartment, they discover that there’s something unusual going on there. They witness something miraculous and decide that they should make a documentary to expose the amazing occurrences within. What follows is a darkly comic journey into the a world of mystery and intrigue. It’s a world where up is down and down is left and left is sideways, but as the dangers of their investigation increase, will they survive to show anyone what they’ve made? Find out in Something in the Dirt.

I Love this movie.

The best comparison I could make is that it’s a mix of 2010’s Monsters and 2012’s John Dies at the End.

Benson and Moorhead star in this film and again, I think they both outdid themselves. I didn’t think they could get better than The Endless, where they gave incredible heartfelt performances as brothers, but they do it here. They play flawed, raw characters from two different paths. Where Levi is a hopeless failure, bound to fall to his demons again and again—Benson brings a likability to the character. On the flip side, John is likable at first—but it’s obvious that there’s something off about him. The performance Moorhead gives is subtle and nuanced. He comes apart at the seams little by little and we the audience feel what Levi feels as their relationship continues. It’s heart wrenching stuff and the two men do incredible work here. As this was shot during lockdown, it is very much their picture even more than The Endless.

The film also has great special effects which are used sparingly and a lot of in camera tricks which look incredible.

There’s also a fantastic score by Jimmy Lavalle and The Album Leaf. It brings to mind the great soundtracks of Tangerine Dream from the 80’s and 90’s. It gives the movie an even more wondrous feel as it’s soundscapes inspire and temper your emotions.

You need to watch this movie.

Check it out currently streaming free on HULU.

and oh yeah…

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I couldn’t go any farther without getting into the meat of this film. I was up half the not jotting down my thoughts and ideas.

To me, this is a movie about co-dependency and gas lighting.

It all starts with John placing himself outside of Levi’s apartment. How long he’s been there is unknown, but I imagine it was quite a while. Then, he immediately works his way into Levi’s life making him indebted by offering a cigarette. He then finds a way into Levi’s house by offering him a couch, further indebting Levi to his generousness.

Once inside Levi’s apartment, he begins planning.

It takes him awhile, he even fakes a call with his grandmother to keep his foot in the door. Then it comes to him. Thus the gaslighting begins. He plants the seeds of the phenomena in Levi’s alchohol flooded brain and it blooms. Delusions can be contagious, especially with someone who is in the throws of addiction. Levi being impressionable is illustrated multiple times in the dialogue. From breaking into a construction site because his sister told him to, by guilting him to spending his life savings on getting his teeth fixed because coworkers told him he’d make more money—he’s shown to be easily influenced.

And John is an expert at using people.

He spends his nights charging scooters, looking for symbols that are ubiquitous, and planting evidence. All the while, he constantly downplays or ridicules Levi’s ideas, lessening Levi’s belief in himself.

And yet, Levi begins to see through the bullshit. He realizes that there was never a snake in his apartment—the snake skin shedding was planted by John as were the quartz deposits. Levi calls him on this near the halfway point of the film with John having no defense. It’s also revealed that the book of mystical mathematics that John claims he’s had since he was a boy is actually a facsimile that John wrote and had printed recently.

Here’s the kicker though—he also planted the geocaches. He planted the recording device in a spot near a billboard displaying a picture of the beach Levi spear fishes at. He then planted the redacted papers with the beach’s zipcode on them. He’s desperate to keep Levi invested, so he lets him have a mystery.

He gives this away when Levi presents the skull and John lashes out that the skull is fake, and immediately recoils when he realizes it—especially when Levi calls him out on it.

After witnessing John’s erratic behavior including planting evidence, going through Levi’s bags, and reading Levi’s mail. He decides to leave—and breaks the spell. At this point, John has no other option left to continue his narrative. He kills Levi and throws him out the window. He then takes him to the same beach he normally spear fishes at and dumps him into the water—allowing nature to mangle his body and sell the finale of his documentary.

When we get to hear from the many editors of the film that is now no longer in John’s control—with the editors saying they quit due to ethical reasons—it’s a hint that they saw the same footage Levi did and more. They also realized that John “accidentally” melted the harddrives with the actual footage of the phenomena on them. All the actual evidence of something amazing went up in smoke, replaced by poor SFX.

Everything we saw in the film as part of John and Levi’s shared delusion.

Here’s the kicker—this isn’t the first time John has done this. He has done it many times before. The hint is in the stories he tells to Levi near the beginning. He says a guy killed himself with pills in the apartment across the way, but near the end of the film he slips and refers to a woman overdosing, blaming the apartment complex.

My theory is that she was another one of John’s victims, just like his ex-husband. However, his ex-husband escaped before his planned ending—however he’s forced to pay blackmail for whatever John is holding over him.

I believe the authorities caught up with John following the discovery of Levi’s body and with the testimony of the editors who were so disturbed by the footage they viewed of John’s behavior. This is why it’s said multiple times that the documentary is no longer in John’s control.

I may be overthinking this, but the fact that I even chased down these threads is part of the reason I love Benson and Moorhead films. They let you imagine the world you’re viewing. They have an intended goal, but they leave it to the audience.

At it’s core, supernatural or not, Levi is an insecure moron at the mercy of John--the sadistic idiot narcissist which leads to his death.