By Simon Thompson
Writer and director duo Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy’s Dead Mail is a movie that I really wanted to like. It’s got a plot which looks great on paper, a strong sense of direction visually, and some genuinely good performances from the cast-the problem is that the elements that do work about the movie are undone by flaws which are as big as Popeye’s biceps and as difficult to ignore as a kabuki theatre re-enactment of the OJ Simpson trial.
Structurally, Dead Mail is a two-hander between an A-plot and a B-plot. The A-plot centres around a dead-letter investigator named Jasper (Tomas Boykin), who receives a sinister and anonymous note. The note in question relates to the B-plot involving a kidnapped keyboard technician called Josh ( Sterling Macer Jr), who after attempting to leave a business venture with a fellow sound technician named Trent ( John Fleck), finds himself held prisoner within Trent’s isolated and sound-proofed home.
The biggest issue that Dead Mail has is that there are two connecting narratives in the first place. Simply put, the plotline involving Jasper and the post-office isn’t particularly interesting at all- largely due to what I found to be the dull characterisation of Jasper’s colleagues, who all fall into the stock small-town politeness cliché which is about as lively and engaging as it sounds.
The B-plot however involving Josh and Trent, is the film’s real strength and if DeBoer and McConaghy scrapped the post-office sections all together and just focused on this side of the narrative, Dead Mail would have been so much better, ending up as movie which would have been like Brian De Palma’s Phantom of The Paradise meets Misery. Instead however, the audience is sadly lumbered with two plots which don’t mesh together quite as smoothly as the filmmakers would have hoped.
Putting the flawed plot aside, Dead Mail does contain some truly fantastic acting, especially from Sterling Macer Jr and John Fleck. Macer Jr’s characterisation of Josh as a quiet, unassuming everyman really allows you to feel for Josh and his situation later in the movie, proving that the best kind of horror protagonists aren’t walking talking brick shit-houses on legs Chris Redfield types, but average everyday people put into intense and perilous situations from which they have to rely on their wits to escape. John Fleck’s performance as Trent works because he manages to strike the right balance between being a genuinely charming, erudite, cultured and chilling psychopath but also chewing more scenery than a curious Alsatian puppy.
Visually, Dead Mail is a strikingly beautiful film to look at. DeBoer and McConaghy utilise a washed yet warm colour palette which when mixed with the film’s mid-western American setting gives it look that I could best describe as if John Carpenter directed American Splendour. Its use of mundane-suburbia as a setting strongly reminded me of horror classics such as Phantasm, Candyman, Manhunter, Henry Portrait of A Serial Killer, and Halloween, with the cinematography’s pre-digital style grainy aesthetic only strengthening those comparisons.
To conclude, while Dead Mail does feature eye-pleasing visuals and some terrific acting, it’s a movie that is sadly undone by meandering pacing and a script which doesn’t quite work. However it’s clear that DeBoer and McConaghy are two talented directors and although Dead Mail isn’t quite the finished article, they are directing duo with a bright future ahead of them.
Dead Mail screened as part of the Overlook Film Festival 2024.
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