In short: Something in the Dirt (2022)

Levi (Justin Benson), a guy with no social life whatsoever, has just moved into an old apartment building in Los Angeles, into an apartment that has stood empty for years. His neighbour John (Aaron Moorhead) doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d become his friend, but after they observe a curious light phenomenon – and possibly some freaky shit with the local gravity – they decide to team up to shoot a documentary about whatever the hell is going on. John’s attempts to explain the High Strangeness become increasingly byzantine and conspiratorial, while Levi just lets himself get dragged along.

This movie is what happens when house favourite filmmakers Benson & Moorhead get antsy during lockdown. They get a script and a couple of friends together and simply make a movie that’s small in scope but big on everything else, a thing full of little twists and suggestions, intelligent as well as clever ideas.

It’s actually rather complicated to describe the film properly, really, for it is at once an odd couple buddy movie with sinister elements, a meditation on the lure of the strange and the conspiratorial, a meta movie about filmmaking and morality and a serious character portrait of the friendship (or not) and betrayal between two very differently fucked up men. It is also probably one of the most genuinely capital W Weird movies around, finding its Weirdness in the modern folklore around High Strangeness while also criticizing the trajectory too much of this kind of folklore takes these days.

Oh, and it’s also an LA movie, because why the hell not, and what’s stranger than that city?

Through some strange and improbable kind of alchemy – for once, I have little idea why any of this works as wonderfully as it does – all of these themes and elements come together into a film that is at once peculiar, personal, and speaking to more universal things. This little wonder was made on enthusiasm and friendship, yet still looks pretty damn fantastic. It is edited and structured like an intricate multi-level puzzle that includes the counter-arguments to its theses, puts ambiguities and precision exactly where they are needed, while grounding its ideas and high concepts in a believably portrayed, complex humanity. It’s also pretty funny.

That all of this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea is quite obvious, but going by the filmmakers’ body of work, it’s really not supposed to. To me, Something in the Dirt feels rather like it was made with me as an ideal audience in mind, which doesn’t happen every week.