I really enjoyed Dead Mail. REALLY enjoyed it. I have two main concerns that make me hesitant to recommend it to everyone else though. One, it's a bit too similar to some other films released in the past few years (in terms of style and structure). Two, it's one of those films that will suffer from being pushed on people as a horror when I'm pretty sure it's much more in line with some standard thriller fare. Of course, I am often the first one to push back against genre labels, viewing them more as handy indicators of what type of film you may be getting instead of rigid parameters that something needs to stay inside, but it's always worth pointing out the subtle distinction that may lead to a film being less appreciated by people who maybe expect it to be something that it isn't.
The second feature to be both co-written and co-directed by Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy, and it features a number of cast members they clearly seem to enjoy working with (considering many of them featured in their feature debut, and a number of them feature on the subsequent film solo directed by McConaghy), this is an intriguing and stylish thriller that makes use of a non-chronological approach to keep viewers interested in seeing how the various pieces fit together.
Everything starts with a man (Josh, played by Sterling Macer Jr.) crawling towards a mailbox. He is chained, clearly being held as a prisoner by someone. His scrawled message gets collected before his captor can get to work on the mailbox, which leads to the "letter" being investigated by Jasper (Tomas Boykin), a man with a reputation for great detective skills that often return lost or mis-sent items to their rightful owners. Some may assume that the message is a hoax, but Jasper soon starts to suspect that there's something to it.
Playing out like many other detective thrillers, with the one main difference being that it's a postal worker attempting to unravel things here, Dead Mail is an enjoyable journey through the minds of the various characters who get involved with the central mystery. Boykin's character is a conscientious and smart man who does his job with little fanfare or reward, aside from personal satisfaction. Macer Jr. gets to portray someone obsessed enough with his own project that he doesn't notice a selection of red flags that someone else starts waving in his face. Micki Jackson and Susan Priver are enjoyably typical workers/colleagues who eventually end up picking up on a few clues left behind by someone else, and John Fleck brings an entertaining extra serving of strangeness to the whole thing.
I'm still hesitant to recommend this to others though. But, because I should "put my money where my mouth is", I'll overcome that hesitation by simply recommending it to everyone who has had their interest piqued by this review. If you like detective work shown in films, if you like some retro aesthetics, and if you might enjoy a plot that also makes room for a look at developments in the world of synthesiser sounds . . . you could end up enjoying this as much as I did.
8/10
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