It stars an ensemble cast led by Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson, Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick, Orlando Bloom and Mike Birbiglia.

When Lee and Jude leave for the weekend to stay with her parents so that Tim can work without distraction on the family's taxes, he invites a group of friends—including Ray, Phil, Adam, and Paul—to the house for the night.

Phil, who is skeptical about the digging, leaves with Adam and Paul as Tim's friend Billy and call girls Alicia and Max arrive at the house.

The next morning, Tim is visited by a neighbor who warns him that digging for buried items in the backyard is a bad idea and says that the site was once the "Chicano Hall of Fame".

Digging for Fire was based on a real incident in which Jake Johnson and his wife dug up a bone and a gun in the garden of a house they had rented.

[3] Swanberg found the process of editing Digging for Fire more difficult than for his previous films, since there were many different possibilities of how to integrate the separate storylines involving Tim and Lee.

The site's consensus states: "Digging for Fire finds director/co-writer Joe Swanberg working from a familiar palette, but in ways that suggest he's taking new and exciting strides as a filmmaker.

[23] Peter Travers, who awarded the film 3 out of 4 stars in a review for Rolling Stone, highlighted the performances, cinematography and score, and felt that Digging for Fire showed Swanberg to be "a true filmmaker".

[24] Screen International critic Tim Grierson found the film to be honest and insightful, and drew particular attention to Johnson and DeWitt's "nimble, low-key performances".

[25] An Banh of Indiewire opined that the film was the most "emotionally mature" of Swanberg's works and that each of the actors gave "purposeful, plot-driven performances" in spite of the large cast.

[26] The Austin Chronicle's Kimberley Jones, on the other hand, felt that the story suffered because of the large cast and wrote that "mostly it's just a toe listlessly pushing dirt around".

[27] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune praised Ben Richardson's cinematography and "natural tone" of the acting but felt that the dialogue was lacking, giving the film 2 out of 4 stars.

[28] The San Francisco Chronicle's G. Allen Johnson also criticized the "forced and uninteresting" dialogue and thought that the story and characters felt "phony".

[29] The Boston Globe critic Ty Burr found the film uninsightful, writing that "Swanberg is tilling soil here that has been churned since humanity began", and felt that the plot focused too much on Tim rather than Lee.