Something in the Dirt (2022)

A young, hip, working class slacker wakes up on the floor of his mostly-empty new low-rent L.A. apartment and meets the young, hip, working class slacker neighbor. There are some crazy math scribbles on the wall, and encounter some interdimensional rainbow warping in his hallway. His ashtray levitates, and they run away. L.A. burns in the background, not because it's post-apocalyptic, but just because that's what L.A. is actually like.

They decide it's ghosts and start collecting camera gear to try to capture video of it, which they aren't very good at. A lot of conversation, going for the Clerks style calm, casual, realistic chitter chatter. I think this is what they call "mumblecore." The established downstairs resident has some questions about the new upstairs resident, but he has a perfectly plausible explanation for each oddity.

They start seeing mathematical symbols all over L.A., in graffiti and reflections and building carvings. This makes them question whether it's actually a ghost; aliens have entered the chat. They spend some unknown, large amount of time hanging out in the apartment with cameras, chatting casually about maths, gravity, and giving apples to children. It mixes footage from real cameras, consumer cameras, phone cameras, and B-roll.

It's also a mockumentary, because why not. Every once in a while, it cuts to a behind-the-scenes filming of documentary interviews with the same characters talking cryptically, because something bad happened but they don't want us to know what yet. The documentary segments are very infrequent, and say very little.

One day, the closet illuminates brightly and pulsates. The downstairs neighbor communicates with it using a flashlight. A crystal grows out of the closet floor. They talk about alien communication channels, based on TED Talks they watched on YouTube. A large airplane almost lands on the roof of their two-story apartment complex. There's a whole lot of chit chat until the next thing happens, which is the crystal playing some classical music to them while it hovers. They play a thermin back at it, because of course a couple of poor slackers have a theramin in the closet. The upstairs guy starts getting very concerned for their safety, and suggests ending the research.

Their cactus grows a shiny, bloody fruit. The neighbor immediately decides to eat it, but is interrupted and then forgets to. Things start having morse code GPS coordinates, and now the upstairs neighbor suspects odd behavior from the downstairs guy. The downstairs guy is convinced it is all connected to a cult linked to Pythagorus. At the GPS coordinates, they find a completely censored book called "The History of the [censored]" in an abandoned desert building. Highly Pi like in story, but without all the excitement.

They start having creative differences, and spy on each other, and they're full of secrets. All of the furniture starts floating as they have a full falling out. They fall asleep; the downstairs neighbor wakes up on the ceiling, the upstairs neighbor vanishes and is never seen again, possibly sucked into the sky.

The film has awful IMDB reviews, which are, quite frankly, undeserved. They did a lot with a shoestring budget and a scant pandemic lockdown crew, and they did it pretty well. Maybe not the world's best cinematography, but it has style and intent. Sometimes the dialog drags a bit, but it's legitimately realistic and performed well. This movie is what I expected the world to be like when video cameras became so cheap that anybody could afford to make a movie with a few friends, but instead the world is like Star Wars XXII: The Silver Surfer Returns.