Jason's Review of Something in the Dirt 2022 ★★★★½

Watched Feb 14, 2023

I’d been somewhat mixed on Benson and Moorhead before. I liked (but didn’t quite love) Resolution and Synchronic. And while I love the ideas behind Spring and The Endless, I didn’t much enjoy those films.

But this? This is very much my kind of enigmatic, cosmic insanity.

A bare-bones description would be to say that it’s about two neighbors (Benson and Moorhead themselves) who start to notice and document very strange phenomena in their L.A. apartment complex. That’s just the beginning though, it would be more accurate to describe it as a darker, homemade Everything Everywhere All At Once (minus the martial arts).

Bound to drive a lot of people nuts with its weird sense of humor and steadfast commitment to reality-bending, ambiguous weirdness and not providing any easy answers, but if you’re intrigued it’s well worth checking out!

Of all the “made during the pandemic” movies I’ve seen, this might be the best at conveying the fragmented reality we lived through, and are continuing to live through.

“Bite the apple with finality.”

P.S. I think it’s awesome that so many movies lately are reminding me of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, one of the best and most mind-blowing (and challenging) books I’ve ever read…and here’s another one!

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