Something In The Dirt Explained-What Happened To Levi And Jerusalem Syndrome

Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson have forged a unique and readily identifiable kind of cosmic horror that is all their own. It is 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 for how decent people can be, this film made me remember 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, begin working together to explain and document it. They start shooting a documentary trying to capture the phenomenon and find they have very different ideas about what is happening. The men are living relatively isolated from the world for different reasons. Levi has been in and out of prison but has retained a hopeful outlook, while John is a nasty piece of self-absorbed work. He is sure he is owed something because of his intelligence, and he views everyone as entitled dilettantes or targets. Both of them have something to hide and atone for. While on paper, it sounds like another spectacle-driven horror film Nope, it is really about the simple horror of searching for meaning in misery and finding nothing.

Shot on a micro-budget, conceived during the pandemic and starring Moorhead and Benson, it is a character study masquerading as a sci-fi movie. In many ways, it seems the most personal of their films. That might be because they wrote, directed, and starred in the movie, but it also is because it feels universally true. The same things that motivate, consume, and scare 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.

The ending of Something In The Dirt

After witnessing an inexplainable light display and a gravity-defying ashtray, John and Levi set to work getting cameras and making theories. It would be funny, and in places, it is, but this undercurrent of tragedy exists. It’s as if we can see things will end badly even if Levi and John don’t. Levi is as sweet and vulnerable as he is broken, while John is awful. Early in Something In The Dirt, you see where things are going. All of the signs point toward someone getting hurt. You hope you are wrong. The more the two men witness, John becomes more controlling and dismissive. He has more ideas than sense, and any time Levi has a thought to contribute, he is shut down.

It becomes obvious John doesn’t care to hear anyone else’s opinion because he has already formed the narrative, and everything that happens after that will be shoehorned in. Whatever doesn’t fit, or anytime he needs to keep Levi on track, he invents, buys, or lies. When red flags begin appearing about John and the phenomenon in their apartment building, the two men have disparate reactions. Levi is cautious and ultimately wants to leave things alone, fearing that he or someone else will get hurt. John could care less about the risk to others, and with the hubris of the righteous, he forces Levi to continue.

We get to see bits and pieces of the documentary and the filming process itself. The nonlinear structure makes it tough to know what really happened, but we know something terrible did. When the cactus in Levi’s apartment grows a mysterious fruit, John is convinced the seeds inside spell out coordinates in Morse Code. That leads them to a burned-out building in the desert, where they find a radio playing the same looped message they heard on 190.8 on the dial. Those same numbers are tattooed on Levi’s hands and appear in several places serendipitously, or so John says. By now, Levi suspects that John has been lying about many things. He finds a receipt for a book John claims to have had since he was a child and thinks a lot of what John says is fabricated.

So much of what happens in both the film and the documentary within the film is open for interpretation. So many of the things could have happened just as we saw them. The closet in Levi’s apartment could have been emitting a pulsating light. An unknown entity could have been echoing Levi’s guitar strings plucking out Ode To Joy, and maybe there was something to the number 1908. It is just as likely that John made it all up after Levi was gone. With Levi out of the way, John could follow every bonkers thread he wanted. We only know that Levi is dead or missing, and John continued to make his documentary.

Jerusalem Syndrome and the Pythagorean Brotherhood

I admit to being a Reddit lurker who has fallen down more rabbit holes than I care to admit. I could relate to 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 spit him back out. Both men need to believe the bizarre events are proof that there is a reason for their suffering. Levi sees it at the beginning as a way to make sense of what happened to his sister, and John sees it as proof that he is right to think he isn’t to blame for how his life turned out.

Humans want to make sense of the strange. We seek patterns and familiarity often when there is none because the alternative is too scary to comprehend. The universe is a mysterious, terrifying, and sometimes lonely place. We are but a tiny part of it. Because of John’s superiority, he sees wonder in the science of their documentary and begins seeing patterns everywhere. He thinks the strange occurrences could be caused by everything from parasitic cat viruses to the Fibonacci sequence, Free Masons, and governmental coverups. MK Ultra and Cointel are mentioned with enthusiasm, as if he was lifted directly from the darkest regions of a deep Wiki page.

After forwarding even stranger hypotheses like aliens and the Jerusalem Syndrome, John settles on the Pythagorean Brotherhood. The real cult that worshipped Pythagoras is a clear tie to Benson and Moorhead’s previous movies. Along with the time-looping boundary sticks like the ones in The Endless, it is obvious Something In The Dirt comes from the same universe as their other movies. John was right in the beginning to suspect Jerusalem Syndrome. He saw what he wanted, and to hell with the truth. Like the man who wandered into the desert on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, John got lost in his fervor, and Levi suffered as a result of it.

What happened to Levi?

Depending on how much you believe John, Levi could have floated off into the atmosphere only to freeze in space or come crashing down as the brief bloody glimpse of his mangled body proposes. Unfortunately, so much of the final story is jaded by John’s lies. Several people were brought in to finish the project, many of whom left for monetary and ethical reasons. Although the few people still involved with the project at the end allude to a tragedy, no one says explicitly what that was. Did Levi float away, or did John manipulate a fragile man who committed suicide like his sister before him?

Knowing what we do about John, it seems more likely that Levi committed suicide or left wanting nothing else to do with John and his fictionalized documentary. The mystic in me wants to believe that the Harmony of the Spheres was communicating with the men, even if that means Levi disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle. The realist, however, knows John and his radiation suit made of shower curtains, plastic wrap, and laundry baskets is a fraud that would go to any length to justify his existence.

The final showdown between the men points to the real truth. John is cruel, and Levi was ill-equipped to handle his abuse. Maybe whatever was happening was exacerbated by their heightened emotions. Perhaps it was all a product of John’s need for formation and the Jerusalem Syndrome. The only thing sure is these two men were bound together by circumstance and isolation. In the end, Something In The Dirt is an exploration of loneliness and regret. But, like the Japanese Russian Doll Warblers seen during the credits at the end of Something In The Dirt, there are things that defy explanation.

There are some things beyond our understanding. Where do socks go when they lose their mate? Why does Netflix keep canceling shows, and how does anyone still like Tom Brady? Instead of doing the truly smart thing and accepting that we aren’t the most important, we seek evidence that we are meaningful. Something In The Dirt is cosmic horror at its best. It is about looking for proof of our importance and finding out how truly insignificant we really are. The thing most dangerous is not any cosmic enigma but human nature.