Vengeance

B.J. Novak wrote, directed and stars in this mercurial pitch-black comedy about a New York writer who goes to Texas to investigate the murder of a "girlfriend" he barely knew.

“Vengeance” is one of those movies that sneaks up on you.

I’ll admit, about 20-30 minutes in, I was edging up to boredom. B.J. Novak, best known for his comedic work on “The Office,” plays a New York media type who goes to remote Texas to investigate the death of his girlfriend. The twist is that he actually barely knew the woman, who was just one in a blur of random hook-ups. But her family mistakenly believes they were a couple, he gets arm-twisted into attending the funeral, and then thinks he’s discovered a great story about a possible murder.

Things start off about how you’d expect. The Texans are depicted as simple-minded yokels who love guns, Whataburger and saying “bless your heart” when they’re really suggesting you go eff yourself.

It’s a familiar dynamic played for laughs, cynical East Coaster smirking at the backward red-state hayseeds. You can get a steady diet of this stuff from late-night TV hosts and legacy media journalists — smug Beltway folks who approach the rest of America as zoological exhibits.

But then, ever so subtly, things start to turn. Ben Manalowitz — a name sure to draw eyeblinks in the Texas hardscrabble — starts to get really invested in the story. Partly that’s because he sees it as his big chance to break through with a true crime podcast series that are all the rage (especially if there’s a dead white girl.) But also because he starts to genuinely identify with the family of Abby (Lio Tipton, seen only in YouTube and phone videos).

It’s a very mercurial movie with a tone that wanders all over the Texas plains. It starts as a fish-out-of-water comedy, gets darker and more mysterious, has moments of reverential hope and joy, then surprises you with sudden, sharp descents into the deepest dead ends of the human soul.

I’m not even sure what to call it — black comedy, I guess. Though Novak, who also wrote and directed, has crafted something that deliberately defies all the round holes we’re tempted to peg it into.

Boyd Holbrook plays Abby’s brother, Ty Shaw, a big goofy garrulous blond… though with a strange, vague air of menace about him. He’s convinced Abby was murdered by the Mexican drug cartels, despite the official report of ODing on opioids. Her body was found in a bare stretch of oil rig country known as “the Afterparty” for its late night doings.

Everyone goes, but nobody was there, is how the locals speak of it.

Ben convinces his friend, Eloise, a producer at a big NPR-like radio company, to turn it into a podcast series about how Americans indulge in creative myth-making to justify their political and cultural viewpoints. (She’s played by Issa Rae, who has gobs of screen presence and should be targeted for leading roles.)

He starts recording conversations with people all over town, starting with Abby’s family, with whom he stays. J. Smith-Cameron is terrific as Abby’s mother, a woman of kindness and vinegar, who treats Ben politely even though she suspects he looks down upon them. Louanne Stephens is the saucy grandma, still riled up about the Alamo.

Isabella Amara and Dove Cameron would seem to fall into familiar types as Abby’s younger sisters, the Goth one and the vapid one, but they’ve got their own secrets and surprises. Elli Abrams Bickel plays the kid brother, who the family calls El Stupido, which Ben thinks is mean but Ty dismisses because “he doesn’t understand Spanish.” Even this role, which would be a throwaway part in most movies, finds ways to worm its way past our emotional epidermis.

And the local “Mexican” drug dealer, Sancholo (Zach Villa) — who actually grew up with Abby — turns out to be a different person than we expect.

The film really spins off into unexpected territory when Ashton Kutcher turns up as the producer at the Quentin Sellers Music Factory — “Making Dreams Come True Since 2018.” He wears a 10-gallon hat so big it should tickle absurdity but somehow manages to fit Kutcher’s face like it was meant to be there.

Quentin, who spent time back East himself, does a lot of philosophizing that earns Ben’s respect, as he also fancies himself as the sort of person who can see connections and correlations others don’t. Quentin advises him that even when you can’t create anything new, by listening and repeating what we hear in our own translation, that’s how we find our voice.

Novak gives a solid, expressive performance as a very smart guy who hasn’t bothered to do any kind of deep thinking about himself, his life or motivations. His go-to phrase is “100 percent,” whether he’s jabbering with his New York wingman about whether it’s better to date six or seven women at a time or commit to just two or three, or nodding along with Ty or the other Texans to whatever loopy stuff they just said as a way to get them to open up and provide good audio.

“Vengeance” wears the clothes of a silly comedy, but has something to say about these characters and how people — all of us really — relate to each other in this dim, digital age. We’ve replaced connections with performance, conversations with recordings of ourselves.

This is the story of a man who goes to ferret out the truth behind a lie, and just finds an endless onion of deception and delusion. We’re just stumbling through a camera obscura reflection of our lives.