Something in the Dirt directors recommend 5 great mindf--- movies
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Writer-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have repeatedly messed with their characters' heads in sci-fi-horror-fantasy movies like 2012's Resolution, 2017's The Endless, and 2019's Synchronic. Their new film, Something in the Dirt, goes one step further by playing with the audience's very understanding of what they are seeing. The movie stars the directors themselves as a pair of Los Angeles neighbors who set out to document a supernatural phenomenon occurring in one of their apartments, although, as the film progresses, we're increasingly given reason to question not just the genuineness of what they're seeing but the nature of the movie itself.
Aaron Moorhead Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson in 'Something in the Dirt'
"I think it's very fair to say that we like messing with reality," says Moorhead who, together with Benson, also directed episodes of the Marvel shows Moon Knight and Loki. Something in the Dirt falls in the grand tradition of "mindf---" movies, films which deliberately toy with expectations and narrative rules in entertaining, confusing, or terrifying ways. Benson and Moorhead reveal their five favorite examples of the genre below.
Lake Mungo (2008)
In director Joel Anderson's chilling mockumentary, a drowned teenager may be haunting her family.
JUSTIN BENSON: Lake Mungo is about the unfortunate demise of a young woman and the family's grief at dealing with that — and the constant question of whether something otherworldly is afoot. The performances are so good in this documentary that's not real, you often find yourself wondering: Is this real?
AARON MOORHEAD: The director made this one movie, and no more movies after it, and it's this legendary movie everybody loves. I wish that there was some dark thing, but we happen to know Joel is alive and well and we've actually corresponded with him. But we really like the idea that somebody just dropped this movie in front of you and you don't know if you're watching a real documentary. It's so hard to make a frightening movie that also messes with your mind. When they do both, that is a rare thing.
Waking Life (2001)
Richard Linklater's trippy animated film finds various folks ruminating on the nature of existence, including the director himself and two of his most beloved characters, Ethan Hawke's Jesse and Julie Delpy's Céline from the Before trilogy.
BENSON: There are so many scenes in it that are infinitely memorable. Even if you don't remember the dialog, you remember the format of it, and it yields so much, like a dream in that way. Upon rewatch, a few vignettes really stood out. One was with Jesse and Céline from Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight. Another one that really stands out is Richard Linklater himself. That monologue he gives toward the end, when he's playing pinball, is profound, and it must have been terrifying to do it. He's already making a movie that is right on the boundary of, like: Will people connect with this or not? And then he puts himself in it as a deliberate mea culpa and it's just great. Such bold filmmaking.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Naomi Watts is an aspiring actress who pals up with Laura Harring's amnesiac in David Lynch's hallucinatory Hollywood-set mystery.
MOORHEAD: David Lynch is a person who has achieved the feat of doing some of the scariest scenes of all time, and Mulholland Drive is no exception. Even in the horror community, it feels like everybody loves David Lynch, but very rare [is] the idea that maybe he's our greatest horror filmmaker when it comes to the actual feeling of being scared. I walk away from Mulholland Drive thinking that there's just something deeply wrong with the world and I'm not quite sure why. I think it just makes an intuitive sense to all of us, and maybe not a logical one, and that's scary. Why do my emotions tell me this makes sense when my brain knows that it doesn't follow the rules of the actual world? It gives you this idea that maybe there are other rules that are cosmically being obeyed.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
Director William Greaves plays a version of himself in the filmmaker's experimental movie, made up of "behind-the-scenes" footage for a nonexistent project.
MOORHEAD: One of my favorite things in the world is going on the Criterion Channel and just pressing play on whatever I see, whether or not I've heard of it. A few years ago, I pressed play on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. It is essentially a kind of behind-the-scenes film, but what you realize that the movie the director is making does not exist. The director is playing a character and the behind the scenes is the movie. He's like, I'm going to drive this crew crazy, I'm going to play an idiot, and I'm going to watch what they do, while the behind-the-scenes camera is rolling. The movie makes you really question intent, and point of view, and even sanity in a way that I've never seen before or since.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
A Nightmare on Elm Street director Wes Craven and cast members Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund are haunted by the "real" Freddy Krueger in a meta-horror movie.
BENSON: Aaron's never seen it, and I haven't seen it since I was a very young child, but there is a movie in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise that takes place in our real world where essentially those who worked on A Nightmare on Elm Street are being pursued by a malevolent entity that is a manifestation of their own creation of Freddy Krueger and is probably connected to some ancient primordial evil that predates. It's something that's really fun to talk about.
MOORHEAD: Was that made before Scream?
BENSON: Yes! Scream takes it in a direction that is decidedly not supernatural in Kevin Williamson's now legendary script. But the similarities are kind of haunting.
Something in the Dirt is in theaters now. Watch the film's trailer below.
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