I first became aware of Mike White, the creator, director and writer of HBO's hit series-du-jour "The White Lotus," which wraps up its second season Sunday, way back in 2000. "Chuck & Buck," the creepily unsettling low-budget indie in which he starred and wrote, slipped unnoticed into theaters and, at the enthusiastic urging of a colleague at the time, Miami Herald's then film critic Rene Rodriguez, who's now an adjunct film professor at the University of Miami, it landed on my must-see list.

Despite the fact that the movie had received good reviews and was a grand-jury prize nominee at Sundance, there were few in the theater. And the ticket-taker didn't inspire much film-going confidence. "Are you sure you want to see this?," he asked incredulously.

"Chuck & Buck" (available on Prime Video and other streamers), the story of an awkward, emotionally stunted twentysomething (Buck, played by White) who stalks his childhood best friend (Chuck, played by Chris Weitz) and inserts himself into said friend's successful, music-biz life, remains a squirm-inducing, discomfiting watch 20 years later. This story of a friendship that metastasized into a one-way obsession could have been the basis for a "I will not be ignored!"-style horror-thriller -- Joel Edgerton's 2015 film "The Gift" uses a somewhat similar plot in this way very effectively -- but White, along with director Miguel Arteta -- was going for something different. It's an often bleakly funny character sketch of people with unrequited desire and buried secrets slowly being unearthed. Not horror, but tensely horrifying, in the same way as the best moments of "The White Lotus."

But the road from "Chuck & Buck," White's second feature, to "The White Lotus" wasn't a straight one. In 2001, White, who also wrote for such teen trauma shows as "Dawson's Creek" and "Freaks and Geeks," launched his own Fox series "Pasadena," a prime-time soap that got down in the dirt with a wealthy California family, but it was quickly axed after just four episodes. (An entire season was shot but, unfortunately, it's not currently available to stream.)

He found a bit more success in 2011 with the the darkly comedic HBO series "Enlightened," starring Laura Dern and Luke Wilson, in which a corporate executive experiences spiritual enlightenment. But, over the years, White mostly has put bread on the table by working on such family friendly fare as "School of Rock," "The Emoji Movie" and "Pitch Perfect 3" (while occasionally delving into more adult material with the films "Brad's Status" and "The Good Girl").

With "The White Lotus," an ensemble piece with a different cast each season in which rich people behave poorly at a luxury resort and someone winds up dead, White returns to his more anxiety-inducing, "Chuck & Buck" roots and is experiencing his biggest success. The seeds that were planted in 2000 have blossomed into something deliciously bittersweet.

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Both seasons -- the first set in Hawaii, the second in Sicily -- begin with a dead body and the episodes that follow tell the story of who it is and how it got that way. And what at first seems somewhat disposable and ephemeral, like vacation snapshots, becomes more tantalizingly twisted and complex with each episode.

But White is no Agatha Christie. White, who writes and directs each episode, is less concerned with the mechanics of the murder but the mechanics of the privileged people involved, what makes them tick. Last season, it ranged from the dead-end drudgery of the staff -- watching spa manager Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) have her dreams crushed was heartbreaking -- to the toxic marriages, midlife breakdowns, racial blindness and hipster radicalism of the pampered guests.

This season, there's less emphasis on the culture clash and the staff -- though the hotel manager (Sabrina Impacciatore) and two sex workers (Beatrice Granno and Simona Tabasco) are part of the mix -- and more on the interpersonal conflicts of the wealthy. There's the increasingly unhappy marriage between the delightfully ditzy Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) and Greg (Jon Gries) -- the only holdovers from season one -- and the tech-bro duplicity of Cameron (Theo James) and his see-no-evil wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy). Cameron has an odd, competitive bromance with newly wealthy Ethan (Will Sharpe) whose relationship with his wife, the acerbic Harper (a fantastically deadpan Aubrey Plaza), is in the midst of a slow-motion collapse.

Then there's the triumvirate of male disquiet: grandfather (F. Murray Abraham) whose skirt-chasing days are long behind him though he's loathe to admit it; dad (Michael Imperioli) whose marriage has imploded because of his infidelity; and son (Adam DeMarco) who has fallen hard for Tanya's assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson). But she's making time with Jack (Leo Woodall), the nephew of an enigmatic Brit named Quentin (Tom Hollander), who is playing host to a curious group of gay men while seducing a distracted Tanya into a friendship that may or may not be what it seems.

White digs deep into the crevices of these relationships while never forgetting his sense of dark humor. So while it's fun to parlor-game who lives, who dies and who did it, what's most fascinating is how these lives intertwine, unravel and, for the unlucky, end. 

What isn't going to end anytime soon is White's career. The first season of "The White Lotus" won five Primetime Emmys and a third season has already been ordered.

He certainly has come a long way from "Chuck & Buck" playing to acres of empty seats in a Miami multiplex. There's probably even a good chance that even that perplexed ticket-taker will be watching the finale on Sunday.

Are you sure you want to see this? The answer remains the same as it was 22 years ago: Yes, I am.

cary.darling@houstonchronicle.com