Mark Reviews Movies: SOMETHING IN THE DIRT

Something in the Dirt, XYZ Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 3, 2022

The instinct in watching Something in the Dirt is to attempt to follow the trail, the possible logic, and the ultimate meaning of whatever phenomena might happening around and to two seemingly ordinary guys in Los Angeles apartment building. The film is directed by the team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, independent filmmakers who have indulged in similar exercises in mind-trickery in their previous projects, so anyone aware of their work will almost certainly be prepared to look for and dissect all of the clues that this story provides. If we start to search and analyze too much, though, the joke is on us.

That's part of what makes this experiment in conspiracy theories, strange coincidences, pseudo-science, and an apparent encounter with the meta-physical or supernatural so engaging. Benson's screenplay seems to take all of this seriously at first, as those two neighbors discover that what they thought was a glass ashtray might actually be some inexplicable creation of this world or another one. The directing duo lure us into searching for the signs and the hints and the possible explanations for what's happening here. They want us to do so, if only so that they can spring the trap of the story they're actually telling.

It's not as if the two aren't being upfront with their intentions, though. After all, Moorhead plays John Daniels, a man who has lived in this building for about a decade following a divorce, while Benson plays Levi Danube, who moves into an apartment that has been unoccupied for as long as John has lived here.

When the two men meet over a borrowed cigarette in the patio/alleyway alongside the building, Levi asks if the apartment has been empty for so long because a murder took place there. It's something like that, John answers, although his description of events is either a lie or a joke depending on one's perspective of the guy. He seems nice enough, so Levi gives him the benefit of the doubt.

The thing that Levi assumes to be an ashtray—a glass or crystal bowl in the shape of a shell—becomes the centerpiece of a re-thinking about physical concepts such as light and gravity, a vast conspiracy involving what's under the building and all around it hidden in plain sight, evidence of some other dimension, or all of that and more. After visiting his new neighbor in the newly occupied apartment, John notices a strange, prism-like effect radiating from the clear, refractive thing. When Levi comes to check on it, the bowl/shell begins hovering in the air.

Some writing on the wall, written by a former tenant or just always there, hints at theories and formulas, but the two don't have the knowledge to decipher any of it. Whatever is happening, though, needs to be documented. What better way to do so than for the two to make a documentary about the inexplicable events they're witnessing and the investigation into trying to find out some kind of explanation?

This, then, raises a whole new series of questions. Are we watching a narrative about the making of an investigative documentary, or is what we're seeing part of the documentary John and Levi are making? Who are these assorted experts interrupting the story to offer some insight into whatever theory John and/or Levi is working with at any given moment, and why do they seem so troubled, confounded, and/or forgetful about the whole affair? Soon enough, we meet a string of editors who have been hired for the pair's project, and what kind of "ethical concerns" have led each of them to wash their hands of the gig?

The mysteries of the shell keep expanding, until the two men are more or less certain that there's a portal to another dimension inside the closet of Levi's apartment and John becomes convinced that a single number starts a series of connections to the founding of the city, a secret society, and the personal lives of the two guys. Trying to keep track of every detail becomes so overwhelming that, at a certain point, one just has to abandon the notion that any of this will make any sense.

That's the bigger point Benson and Moorhead are making here, because their film doesn't cease the onslaught of information and, more importantly, their characters refuse to give up their search for the truth they're certain is just a bit beyond their grasp. They just have to keep reaching farther and further. As they do, John and Levi become increasingly paranoid about the world around them, the possibilities of some worldly or interdimensional conspiracy that has somehow led right to them, and, since both of them have different opinions about which thread of thinking is more important, each other.

The film, which seems to about some otherworldly or preternatural or conspiratorial phenomena on the surface, gradually reveals itself to be about the two characters at the heart of the puzzle and the investigation. It's desperate, as John and Levi are certain that everything in lives that seem so miserable have now led up to something of cosmic significance, and rather unsettling, as the two begin competing for control of what they're doing and might be inventing elements to manipulate the truth or each other. Ultimately, Something in the Dirt becomes quite the grounded and melancholy experience, because no answer could ever satisfy the questions each one has about what his life was and has become. They keep reaching, though, because the alternative theory is simply cold and harsh reality.

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