Something in the Dirt review – meta DIY sci-fi is a paean to LA esoterica

Conceived during the pandemic, the latest from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead is a transcendent head-scratcher about two slackers’ search for hidden meanings and paranormal signs

Between the likes of Host, Bo Burnham’s Inside and Jacob Estes’s He’s Watching, there’s a respectable pandemic oeuvre emerging – and Something in the Dirt is one of the best yet. This sci-fi-dusted paean to Los Angeles slackerdom is fairly typical for the lockdown genre: a torrent of self-involved invention about not much more than the process of its own creation. But director-stars Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead approach their two-hander with a sly humour and wonderment that prevents it from disappearing up its own fundament.

The film could also be plausibly filed in the LA esoterica category, alongside Mulholland Drive and Under the Silver Lake. Drifter John (Moorhead) moves into the same apartment complex as long-time denizen Levi (Benson), where they witness a strange, scintillating anomaly in his living room that levitates a crystal ashtray and creates spiral patterns on the wall. Initially believing it to be a ghost, they decide to make a documentary about it to snare a Netflix deal. Then Levi, an unblinking adherent to an apocalyptic church, begins noticing these same geometrical patterns everywhere around the city, in brickwork, signs and the like.