[Sundance 2022 Review] Benson and Moorhead's 'Something in the Dirt' is Culmination of a Decade of Filmmaking

Underneath the dense mythologies, time paradoxes and forbidden love stories, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s filmographies are about the outcasts. The people who don’t quite feel at home in the world, whether it’s because they once belonged to a UFO death cult or are struggling with addiction or find some kind of monstrous love overseas.

They’re also about friendships and most of their films strike an uneasy balance between two friends who might not be friends very much longer. The struggle between Dennis (Jamie Dornan) and Steve (Anthony Mackie) in Synchronic, for example. Or, going back to their debut film–which, importantly, shares a lot of DNA with their latest–the simmering tension between long-time friends Chris (Vinny Curran) and Peter (Michael Danube) in Resolution. Benson and Moorhead understand characters and friendship dynamics so that even when they’re operating with the shoestringiest of budgets, they can create something that feels authentic, funny and sad…sometimes all at once. 

As the duo turn towards a well-earned future directing Disney and Marvel’s Moon Knight series, Something in the Dirt encompasses what Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are great at and feels like the culmination of a decade of independent filmmaking. 

The film opens with windchimes as the camera fades in on Levi (Justin Benson), lying on the ground is in recently rented, cheapass apartment. It’s small and dank, and the closet door–that’s covered in curious physics equations–won’t stay shut. Levi picks up a weird crystal abstract item that looks kind of like an ashtray and goes outside where he meets John (Aaron Moorhead). Quickly, the two fall into an easy cadence as if they’ve been friends for awhile. John explains that he used to be married to a man named Lonnie and he was once part of some massive evangelical church. Levi is a bartender and as John begins digging into his friend’s past it become apparent that Levi is haunted by things that happened before he ended up in the cheapest apartment in LA. After chatting for a bit, John has to leave and the camera focuses on a myriad of devices that humm with ominously loud electronic sounds. 

As the pair get to know each other, they also discover something amazing and frightening about the apartment Levi rented. Something weird happens when the two of them are in the room. The “ashtray” begins to refract light, tossing weird yet familiar patterns against the wall. And when they’re both near it, it levitates. The closet door rumbles as if there’s an earthquake brewing and they eventually start seeing patterns in life that connect to the Pythagorean Brotherhood, aliens, ghosts, numerology…and probably a million other conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. Numbers tattooed on Levi’s hand connect to a record player they discover with a voice that speaks mostly in Greek but states the same number and a man’s name. Which leads them to graveyards in LA where they find the person’s grave which leads them on with coordinates. The web they begin to weave either spells doom for the world…or is about nothing. 

Both of them need money, so they decide to film the events in Levi’s apartment in hopes of selling it and becoming rich. Highlighting the connection between the real and the imagined, Something in the Dirt frames their actions as truth but begins to even warp what we’re seeing by suggesting it could be a docuseries recreation. Interspersed throughout this story are segues to talking heads discussing their involvement in John and Levi’s project, like a chemist who opines that either the duo put together some cosmic puzzle or “the way they jammed them together created an abstract mess they could imbue with any meaning.” She still believes a part of it was real. 

The way John and Levi discuss their theories and the connections they begin to see everywhere feels like a pair of friends getting high and “figuring out” the meaning of life. It has a hazy, dream-like flow and logic as each potential revelation leads directly to another thought. Another conspiracy. And before long, the story unfolds like the Matryoshka doll wind chimes that sit and clang just outside John’s apartment. 

Everything is connected. Or nothing is.

What really struck me while watching Something in the Dirt is the way in which a simple pattern leads to grand conspiracy theories and how easily John and Levi are able to fall down various rabbit holes of logic (or nonsense). John and Levi come from disparate backgrounds, but they’re both seemingly running from their past. And like the best of Benson and Moorhead’s characters, they’re outcasts and I personally love that the two friends are queer. John is a gay evangelical while Levi, at one point, announces in a roundabout way that he’s asexual. And while Something in the Dirt catalogues their quest to find meaning in the world, it also charts their friendship as it blooms and potentially dissolves. 

While the subject matter directly pulls from sci-fi and the kind of cosmic horror that’s permeated throughout all of their work, Something in the Dirt feels more akin to stoner dramedies, with characters pontificating on life and the universe. But as they continue to submerge themselves in the conspiracies that lead them across LA, into the desert and into the sea, a sense of paranoia sets in. The camera angles showcase their faces a lot, full of emotion and anxiety. It mimics the way the two get closer and more mentally intimate but also start pushing themselves further away. It’s a dichotomy that’s as nebulous as the revelations they so desperately want. Because if they can find something—aliens, ghosts, some cosmic meaning to life—it will mean that the pain and sorrow they’ve gone through in their lives will have some kind of meaning.

Something in the Dirt is the kind of film you want to sit and ruminate on. It’s an absolute vibe film and fans of the duo’s first film Resolution will find so much to chew on here.