Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson in Something in the Dirt (XYZ Films/Rustic Films)

Two men meet in a Los Angeles apartment complex. They seem harmless enough. One of them, Levi (Justin Benson), has a bunch of tattoos and essentially no furniture in his apartment. He’s on his way out of the city, he says, and has sold all of his things. He feels lucky to have found this no-lease apartment. The other, John (Aaron Moorhead), is clean-cut, divorced, and claims to be a wedding photographer. They strike up conversation over cigarettes, and John offers Levi some excess furniture left behind by his ex. Levi accepts, and when John comes over, the two of them witness one of Levi’s few possessions, a quartz bowl he uses as an ashtray, levitate and emit bluish-green waves of light.

The two view this experience not so much as a mystery to be explored but as a cash cow to be exploited. Immediately, they are talking about getting YouTube views and making a documentary. Though they are both fairly inept, they are dedicated to proving the existence of this supernatural phenomena. Yet this is only one level of the footage we view, for soon we are introduced to talking heads, all of whom are critical of Levi and John, informing us that disaster is on the way. The main story line follows their doomed attempt to achieve their goal, which grows complicated and leads viewers to question what they see.

There are intriguing aspects here. Much of it, at least in the beginning, makes use of natural light, giving the images an everyday quality and special weight to the advent of the supernatural. Co-directors Moorhead and Benson are convincing as the duo, with awkward mannerisms and conversations, which gradually undercover layers of shame and secrets. We can’t always trust what we see or later what they say.

However, the movie loses steam toward the end, as its flaws accumulate and grow more apparent. For all its unsolved mysteries, a surprising amount of information is explained to us. Revelations pop up as neatly as bread from a toaster, and the commentators in the documentary-within-the-film warn us to be suspicious, not trusting us to grow suspicious on our own. As the film progresses, the dialogue between Levi and John becomes less natural and much more highly wrought, neatly including backstories and crazy theories about what they think is happening. As such, this movie gradually becomes less mysterious and engaging as the mysteries of its plot multiply. You wonder if its makers, like the characters they portray, could have used someone to help them step back and gain perspective.