🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Kyle McConaghy and Joe DeBoer
Come for the kidnapping, stay for the teriyaki! Dead Mail…delivers the weird.
The Plot:
On a desolate, Midwestern county road, a bound man crawls towards a remote postal box, managing to slide a blood-stained plea-for-help message into the slot before a panicking figure closes in behind him.
The note makes its way to the county post office and onto the desk of Jasper, a seasoned and skilled “dead letter” investigator responsible for investigating lost mail and returning it to its sender.
As he investigates further, Jasper meets Trent, a strange yet unassuming man who has taken up residence at the men’s home where Jasper lives. When Trent unexpectedly shows up at Jasper’s office, it becomes clear he has a vested interest in the note, and will stop at nothing to retrieve it.
The Players:
Jasper (Tomas Boykin) is a legendary dead-letter investigator. No matter how hard the address is to decipher, Jasper does not stop until the mail is delivered!
Trent (John Fleck) is a homeowner and music enthusiast who takes his obsession too far.
Josh (Sterling Macer Jr.) is a synthesizer engineer and Japanophile whose desire to create the perfect woodwind sound on the synth gets him in hot water.
Ann (Micki Jackson) and Bess (Susan Priver) are Postal employees turned sleuths who discover the truth behind the mysterious letter.
The Evaluation:
Dead Mail is one of the weirdest films I have seen in a long time—and I mean that in the best way. The story reels you in, the performances are wonderful, and the music and visual style transport you to a time when synthesizers ruled.
The film’s runtime is almost 2 hours, which is a drawback. The second act dragged on for an uncomfortable amount of time. It featured callbacks to things we had just seen minutes before (filmmakers, your audience is with you!). There is also a bit too much background into Josh and Trent’s doomed partnership. The first and third acts, however, were well-paced.
All the performances are top-notch, and the world of Dead Mail is truly immersive. It is a wacky and wonderful film!
Dead Mail celebrated its world premiere at SXSW. The Scariest Things will keep you posted as to where Dead Mail will be delivered next (all terrible puns intended).
Review by Liz Williams
Film plot summary provided by SXSW