Uncle John is an audacious combination of genres: a slow-burning mystery-thriller mixed with a mumblecore love story. There’s a dash of morbid comedy thrown in for good measure, too. First-time feature director Steven Piet offers audiences two wildly divergent storylines that can nearly stand on their own accords, but he—somehow—deftly joins the disparate elements together, using contrasts to his advantage.
The film opens with a voice, sermonizing and quoting Bible passages as the camera pans along the open roads of Wisconsin’s pristine countryside. It’s an unsettling and eerie start, with the slightly distorted voiceover—reminiscent of a cult leader preaching to his flock—set against cinematographer Mike Bove’s golden-hued shots of rolling farmland. Later, we assume the voice belongs to Dutch, the town’s bad boy who ultimately found Jesus. Dutch has been reaching out to the people he’s hurt, repenting and making amends for the mistakes in his life.
One of these sessions doesn’t go well—the titular John (John Ashton) is first introduced as he covers up Dutch’s murder. The local farmer/carpenter has a sterling reputation around town, so when Dutch is reported missing, no one suspects John’s involved with the disappearance—with the exception of Dutch’s younger brother Danny (Ronnie Gene Blevins). While John spends much of the film trying to hide his sins, especially from his gray-haired, potbellied coffee klatch, he’s not your typical cinematic killer. Longtime character actor Ashton (Gone Baby Gone, Beverly Hills Cop) turns in a magnificent performance as the buttoned-up farmer whose secrets weigh heavily on his conscience. He’s remorseful, but not enough to turn himself in to authorities.
Uncle John then inexplicably shifts its action to a commercial video production house in Chicago and an office full of millennials. Yes, it’s confusing and head-spinning—our first reaction is “What’s going on here?”—but Piet and co-writer Erik Crary use this switch to deepen the mystery. The film follows computer graphics designer and John’s nephew, Ben (Alex Moffat), and his crush on the company’s new director Kate (Jenna Lyng), a recent transplant from New York. The scenes in Chicago focus on their dynamic as it moves from a work relationship to friendship to possibly something more. These scenes—replete with the copious amounts of beer consumed—is reminiscent of the courtship dance between Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde in Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies (2013). Lyng and Moffat have a decent onscreen chemistry as characters trying awkwardly to navigate the dating pool.
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