Something In the Dirt review: The Endless’ directors deconstruct themselves

Sometimes it’s obvious when a film was made as a COVID-19 project. A lot of established filmmakers have released films about cabin fever or isolation recently — often scaled-back projects that leverage limited casts and locations to sometimes awkward effect. The science fiction film is still in development. Somewhere in the DirtIt is still a quarantine project, but it feels like you are coming home. Moon KnightAnd Synchronic Directors Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead. (Not least because its primary setting is Moorhead’s actual apartment.) This isn’t even the first cosmic-dread-centric head trip they’ve written and directed while also taking prominent roles in front of the camera: In 2018’s The EndlessThe brothers play brothers who are confronted by a doomsday organization based on time loops.

The pair play neighbors in an apartment block in Los Angeles for their latest. Levi Danube, (Benson), is a newly rented apartment. A shady bartender and a long-haired surfer brother with a sketchy history are his neighbors. John Daniels (Moorhead) is a handsome churchgoer who lives on amateur photography gigs and a sideline job for an electric scooter company. He also receives checks from his ex. They’re kindred burnouts of a sort, initially bonded by the relative affordability of a building with planes constantly screaming overhead, then by something else entirely, once they witness supernatural anomalies in Levi’s apartment.

The first is that the stone used for an ashtray starts to move by itself, reflecting ethereal light, and then levitating. Then, mysterious heat sources, musical resonance and localized quakes will soon be followed by other phenomena like objects appearing out of thin air, musical resonance, quakes in the vicinity, and objects seemingly coming from nowhere. John and Levi think these are the keys to better and bigger things. They team up, despite their differences in temperament and styles, to document the events, with the hope of selling the footage to Netflix as a documentary.

Photo: XYZ Films

It follows the narrative beats of found-footage movies, with fake behind-the scenes setups and interview cutsaways that hint at a dark event. There is a catch. The film does not contain panicking, jittery handheld footage. As with Netflix’s Archive number 81The horror series was directed by Benson and Moorhead. Two episodes were filmed. However, the footage serves more as a narrative device rather than an exact style. Levi and John are often seen from conventional cameras, which are observing the action. In what eventually becomes a documentary about Levi and John’s staged reenactments, Levi and John create these scenes.

The way the film doesn’t disclose those reenactments up front deliberately adds a layer of distrust on top of an already knotty meta-movie premise. But it also demonstrates the film’s sense of humor: Unlike the dogged camera-wielders in the horror movies and thrillers more typical of the found-footage format, these guys just don’t have the discipline or focus to keep filming all the time.

John and Levi spend much of the movie presenting theories colored by whatever podcast they just heard, or whatever trivia snippet they’ve retained from falling down a Wikipedia hole. Topics covered include alien contact, radiation concerns and a Pythagoras cult. The ideas they share are simple and easy to understand, making it an enjoyable hangout environment.

After a point, though, it’s apparent that few of these events are meant to add up. (Maybe they are all. It doesn’t matter if the dancing lights and floating objects are real, imagined or staged. What matters is the meaning of the characters. They find patterns that rope in their own personal histories, because that’s ultimately what believing in a conspiracy theory or the paranormal is about: seeing what you want to see in order to create meaning for yourself.

It is the most obvious way to ensure success. Somewhere in the DirtThe rise in fascism and real-life conspiracies is evidence of this. People will believe anything if they want it to be true. The lack of evidence becomes evidence itself, a sign either of a cover-up or that there’s so little to see that only the most observant, knowledgeable few could even notice. People choose their reality, and they tend to pick the one that is most comfortable for them.

Photo by XYZ Films

The way Benson and Moorhead examine found-footage movies is significant here, since the format’s apparent amateurism is so key to its veneer of authenticity. In a traditional film, the artifice can be seen. This suggests manipulation and the potential to fool the viewer. However, crappy lighting and a unsteady camera suggest that we are seeing a chaotic, unfiltered world where very little has been done to smoothen out the edges. It’s how Blair Witch Project can be scary, even though it’s constructed around some vaguely person-shaped arrangements of sticks and a man standing in a corner. When we buy into the reality of what we’re seeing on screen, our minds will do the rest.

Somewhere in the Dirt could justifiably be called an outright parody, demonstrating a prankish undercurrent even beyond the meta flourishes where Levi and John brainstorm titles for their documentary, like “Something in the Light.” The film’s plot and construction invites viewers to question its format and the things it shows through reenactments, and in the process, it demonstrates just how easily and indiscriminately we project meaning to fit the narrative we want. The film is full of cutaways to images that illustrate the full, preposterous range of Levi and John’s talking points, demonstrating how persuasive an argument can become within a framework built to support it. Plausibility can be engineered, and it’s not even hard to do.

Problem with Somewhere in the Dirt, though, is that deconstructing the idea of documentary veracity just isn’t as revelatory in a format we already know is fake. Watching any film — even a found-footage one that’s trying to seem realistic — involves being aware of the artifice, and investing in or rejecting the emotions anyway.

Its overall impact is Somewhere in the DirtIt is somewhat like watching an edited version of Suspects As UsualThis is the moment that the film reveals its big revelation about reality and storytelling. Levi and John go on theorizing long after the film establishes that plausibility is irrelevant, that they can come up with just about any theory about what they’re experiencing and still spin a story that will force the pieces to fit. It runs almost two hours. Somewhere in the DirtThis goes a long ways in proving the obvious fact that there are many patterns available if you look hard enough.

It is clever in its examination of how illusions are constructed. The film’s deflating process also makes the audience leave, cutting off any belief or investment in the story. Compared to the movies that do the same thing with a straight face — the misdirection of Lake MungoThe multimedia detective work of Noroi, The Curse The online alienation expressed We’re All Going to the World’s Fair — There’s Something in the DirtYou get less done and it’s not fun.

Somewhere in the DirtIt opens in theaters Nov. 4th and is available for VOD viewing on November 20th.