Film Review: SOMETHING IN THE DIRT: A Silly, Sarcastic, and Self-Indulgent Sci-fi Slam on Conspiracy Theories [Sundance 2022]

Something in the Dirt Review

Something in the Dirt (2022) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, starring Benson, Moorhead, Sarah Adina Smith, Wanjiru M. Njendu, Vinny Curran, Gille Klabin, Ariel Vida, Megan Rosati, David Lawson Jr., Lonnie Finley, and Rob Fee.

America has an extreme fetishization of individualism, and that arguably makes it fertile ground for conspiracies. The atrocities committed by past generations leave a psychic echo ringing through the ages, which those poor souls who feel rightly disenfranchised by a vastly unfair social structure tune into at varying degrees of accuracy. Sometimes history proves these conspiracy theorists right; other times, they just look batshit insane. Still, it’s hard to deny the recurrence of that nauseating euphoria of falling down the rabbit hole into a tunnel vision of self-assurance. It might not make a lick of sense, but boy, what an absolute vibe it must be!

It’s with that spirit that the notorious DIY filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead plunge headfirst into their latest feature Something in the Dirt, making plain just how annoying it must be to have to deal with that brain-wormed relative of yours at Thanksgiving dinner.

At the start, Levi and John (Benson and Moorhead, respectively) are nobody but strangers who happened to move in next to each other in a crowded little L.A. apartment complex, bumming a smoke off each other from time to time. Levi is a greasy-haired bartender looking to leave the City of Angels behind (much less his past), while John is a recent divorcé trying to find a new sense of direction. Both are aimless in differing ways, and its through this shared mid-life loneliness and chill dispositions that the two thirtysomethings soon become friends. All is fine and dandy … that is, until they witness some really weird shit.

Well … okay, yes, it’s weird shit, but it’s not that weird of shit. A strange piece of glass that Levi found in his apartment that looks like a misshapen ashtray or light fixture starts to hover and hum on its own accord, refracting these strange symbols onto the grimy walls that John swears he’s seen before. What’s more: excessive heat starts radiating out from an empty closet, strange flora suddenly springs up in the living room planter, and other things start to float around the apartment, too. Normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill weird shit, no?

So what is it … a ghost? alien technology? transdimensional wavelengths? To get to the bottom of it, Levi and John do what all rational people would do: make a documentary to prove the existence of a strange phenomenon to then sell it and bank off their respective earnings for the rest of their lives! Obviously! If only ego and unchecked personal hang-ups didn’t keep getting in the way, because then maybe they’d find a discovery besides that discomforting one of the self.

Benson and Moorhead do all the heavy-lifting in this, and for that they deserve their due credit. They have good on-screen chemistry, a sort of chummy sense of humor, and at times an unhinged concept of logic that is so bonkers you can’t help but laugh through it. By the halfway point of SITD you barely know what’s going on anymore – you’re just letting the strangeness wash over you and hoping for the best. If there’s such a thing as Vibe Cinema, then this is a prime example.

That being said, it’s a vibe that definitely won’t be for everyone … quite possibly even the people that it is ultimately for (hello!). In tapping into that conspiratorial, spider web-like, red-strings-on-a-bulletin-board mindset, Benson and Moorhead also create an irritating mess that at times even feels cloying and self-indulgent. The frequent cuts to parallel interstitials – sometimes of simple stock footage, and other times of prior events in the duo’s lives for added context – gets tiresome after the first few, and the shift in focus from narrative to mockumentary to fourth-wall-breaking recreations is rightfully ridiculous but also gives you mental whiplash. (Although I’ve yet to see either of the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm iterations, I suspect that the late William Greaves would’ve gotten a kick out of this.) SITD does not need to have a MacGuffin, because the whole film already is one.

The climactic confrontation further hammers that home, with Levi and John being so wrapped up in their own misgivings toward each other that they fail to witness the conspiratorial proof that’s happening all around them at that very moment. It’s a funny jab toward all the conspiracy theorists we may know in our lives – a dig at their own obsessions and presupposing their predilection towards conspiracy theories as a result of ignoring their own issues and delaying self-improvement rather than out of a genuine academic search of hidden external knowledge. Even so, the film’s untethered approach at such a rudimentary level makes it easy to tune out really fast, which seems more like a creative default than a strength. But hey, at least Benson and Moorhead have the moral decency (much less the acting ability) not to devolve to cheesy mumblegore rife with middle-school levels of homophobia.

And yet the DIY charm is undeniable, akin to the Addams family’s Hellbender with genre glam galore. When it’s rousing it sure is rousing, because if Benson and Moorhead have a definite strength it’s in keeping up a great sense of fun. You won’t uncover any secrets to the universe in Something in the Dirt, but you will have a silly-enough sci-fi sesh.

Rating: 6/10

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