Directed By:
Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Written By:
Justin Benson
Starring:
Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Genre:
Comedy, Sci-Fi
Levi is a new neighbor to John in an apartment in California. Levi meets John, starts to exchange stories and befriend each other with the wildfires of California in the backdrop. One day, Levi and John see something impossible in their apartment. After fearing it could hurt them, but quickly seeing a monetary opportunity, the two decide to try and document and capture what they are seeing in order to reveal to the world. But will the need to reveal this discovery cause more chaos than good?
I could not vibe with this movie. It might be my least favorite of this years Sundance festival for me. I don’t really like talking about films I didn’t like, but being Sundance it’s even harder because this isn’t some big budget soulless corporate film. This is from people who invested their time and efforts into a project that for better or worse, is there’s and they should be proud of it. There are some good visuals when they showcase this entity, and some of the writing at the beginning was working well for me.
The film just doesn’t have a strong narrative in its structure and failed to keep me engaged even from the beginning of the second act. It felt like a pandemic movie but with almost no creativity to make it any large in scale than that. If Bo Burnham: Inside was made by mad libs, just nonsense. What was the story at the end of this? What was the message, what was the point?! Last year I had a similar feeling to The Assistant, which went on to receive quite a bit of praise which perhaps Something In The Dirt could also do this year. But as it stands, I just could not engage with this material and i wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless you are morbidly curious due to my review. I really don’t want to be hard on this movie, but man, I don’t know what to say.
