Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson have forged a unique and easily recognizable form of cosmic horror that is all their own. It’s resonant, often deeply emotional and utterly mesmerizing. Their latest is two of those things. Where most of their films celebrate love in its many forms through the lens of a sci-fi/horror double hitter, Something In The Dirt pokes the soft underbelly of flawed humanity. Where Synchronic and Resolution made me cry about how decent people can be, this movie made me think about the other end of the spectrum. There are dangerous things we can’t imagine, but probably the most dangerous things share our DNA.
John (Moorhead) and Levi (Benson) are neighbors who witness something strange and despite having nothing in common, they start working together to explain and document it. They start making a documentary to document the phenomenon and discover that they have very different ideas about what is happening. The men live relatively isolated from the world for various reasons. Levi has been in and out of prison but has maintained a hopeful outlook, while John is a nasty piece of self-centered work. He is sure that something is owed to him because of his intelligence, and he considers everyone entitled dilettantes or targets. Both have something to hide and make up for. Although on paper it sounds like yet another spectacle-driven horror movie. No, it’s really about the simple horror of looking for meaning in misery and finding nothing.
Filmed on a micro-budget, conceived during the pandemic and starring Moorhead and Benson, it’s a character study masquerading as a sci-fi movie. In many ways it seems like the most personal of their films. That may be because they wrote, directed, and starred in the film, but it’s also because it feels universally true. The same things that motivate, consume, and frighten John and Levi shape us all. Here’s everything you need to know about Something In The Dirt, the conspiracy theories, and what really happened to Levi.
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The end of Something In The Dirt
After witnessing an inexplicable light display and a gravity-defying ashtray, John and Levi set to work getting cameras and coming up with theories. It would be funny, and in some places it is, but this undercurrent of tragedy exists. It’s like we can see it’s going to end badly, even if Levi and John don’t. Levi is as sweet and vulnerable as he is broken, while John is terrible. Early on in Something In The Dirt you see where it’s going. All signs point to someone getting hurt. You hope you are wrong. The more the two men testify, John becomes more controlling and dismissive. He has more ideas than sense, and every time Levi has a thought to contribute, he shuts down.
It becomes clear that John isn’t interested in anyone else’s opinion, as he’s already formed the story, and everything that happens after that will be factored into it. , buy or lie. When red flags begin to appear about John and the phenomenon in their apartment building, the two men react disparately. Levi is cautious and eventually wants to leave things alone, fearing that he or someone else will get hurt. John could not care less about the risk to others, and with the hubris of the righteous, forces Levi to press on.
We get to see bits and pieces of the documentary and the filming process itself. The non-linear structure makes it difficult to know what actually happened, but we know something terrible happened. When the cactus in Levi’s apartment grows a mysterious fruit, John is convinced that the seeds inside spell out coordinates in Morse code. That leads them to a burnt-out building in the desert, where they find a radio playing the same looped message they heard on the dial at 190.8. Those same numbers are tattooed on Levi’s hands and appear randomly in different places, says John. Levi now suspects that John has lied about many things. He finds a receipt for a book that John claims to have had since he was a child and thinks much of what John says is fabricated.
So much of what happens in the film as well as in the documentary is open to interpretation. So many things could have happened the way we saw them. The closet in Levi’s apartment could have emitted a pulsating light. An unknown entity could be ringing Levi’s guitar strings as he strummed Ode To Joy, and maybe there was something about the number 1908. It’s just as likely that John made it all up after Levi was gone. With Levi out of the way, John could follow any crazy thread he wanted. We only know that Levi is dead or missing, and John continued to make his documentary.
Jerusalem syndrome and the brotherhood of Pythagoras
I’ll admit I’m a Reddit lurker who’s fallen down more rabbit holes than I care to admit. I could empathize with John’s obsessions and enthusiasm for the strange and quasi-intellectual. What I couldn’t relate to was John’s narcissistic black hole of a personality that sucks Levi in and spits him out. Both men must believe that the bizarre events are proof that there is a reason for their suffering. Levi at first sees it as a way to understand what happened to his sister, and John sees it as proof that he’s right in thinking he’s not responsible for how his life turned out.
People want to understand the strange. We often seek patterns and familiarity when there aren’t any because the alternative is too scary to understand. The universe is a mysterious, terrifying and sometimes lonely place. We are only a small part of it. Because of John’s superiority, he sees wonder in the science of their documentary and begins to see patterns everywhere. He thinks the strange happenings could be caused by anything from parasitic feline viruses to the Fibonacci sequence, Freemasons and government cover-ups. MK Ultra and Cointel are mentioned with enthusiasm, as if lifted straight from the darkest regions of a deep Wiki page.
After forwarding even weirder hypotheses like aliens and Jerusalem Syndrome, John comes to the conclusion Brotherhood of Pythagoras. The real cult that worshiped Pythagoras is a clear tie to Benson and Moorhead’s previous films. Along with the time-looping boundary sticks like those in The Endless, it’s clear Something In The Dirt is from the same universe as their other movies. John was right to suspect Jerusalem Syndrome in the beginning. He saw what he wanted, and to hell with the truth. Like the man who wandered through the desert on a pilgrimage to JerusalemJohn got lost in his fervor, and Levi suffered.
What happened to Levi?
Depending on how much you believe John, Levi could have drifted into the atmosphere only to freeze or crash into space, as the brief bloody glimpse of his mutilated body suggests. Unfortunately, so much of the final story is blunted by John’s lies. Several people were brought in to complete the project, many of whom left for financial and ethical reasons. While the few people still involved in the project at the end allude to tragedy, no one explicitly says what that was. Did Levi float away, or was John manipulating a fragile man who committed suicide like his sister before him?
Now that we know what we’re doing with John, it seems more likely that Levi killed himself or left because he didn’t want anything else to do with John and his fictionalized documentary. The mystic in me wants to believe that the Harmony of the Spheres communicated with the men, even if that means Levi disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle. However, the realist knows that John and his radiation suit made of shower curtains, plastic wrap and laundry baskets is a con man who will go to great lengths to justify his existence.
The final confrontation between the men points to the real truth. John is cruel and Levi was ill-equipped to deal with his abuse. Perhaps whatever happened was exacerbated by their heightened emotions. Perhaps it was all a product of John’s need for education and the Jerusalem syndrome. The only thing that is certain is that these two men were linked by circumstance and isolation. Ultimately, Something In The Dirt is an exploration of loneliness and regret. But like the Japanese Russian puppet singers seen during the credits at the end of Something In The Dirt, there are things that defy explanation.
There are things beyond our comprehension. Where do socks go when they lose their partner? Why does Netflix keep canceling shows and why does someone still love Tom Brady? Instead of doing the really smart thing and accepting that we’re not the most important, we’re looking for evidence that we’re meaningful. Something In The Dirt is cosmic horror at its best. It’s about looking for evidence of our importance and discovering how insignificant we really are. The most dangerous thing is not a cosmic riddle, but human nature.
As editor-in-chief of Signal Horizon, I enjoy watching and writing about genre entertainment. I grew up on old fashioned slashers, but my real passion is television and all weird and ambiguous stuff. My work can be found here and Travel Weird, where I am the editor-in-chief.
