A bloodstained note finds its way into a 1980s post office.
We’re all a little ambitious, aren’t we? Many films try to capture the aesthetics from fondly remembered decades, Dead Mail finds a beautiful balance between honouring a 1980s aesthetic and crafting a pace that doesn’t make anything seem too present-day. We should have more horror/neo-noir in post offices, It’s a genius setting. And the post office is exploited to every inch of its walls to up the stakes of the perilous kidnapping of keyboard technician, Josh (Sterling Macer Jr.).
We’re thrust into the action, starting from the end, wondering who on earth is crawling for his life and how he got there. In a world of haze and spot-on costume design, you genuinely believe we’ve time-travelled back to the 80s. The whole cast leans into a dull kind of survival; they embody the experience of the 1980s for the working class beautifully – a setting that escalates the novelty of their circumstances.
The choice of a keyboard being the ultimate goal adds a level of mundane absurdity, driving home the human need for invention or success. Working-class people dreaming of riches by inventing the next best thing has been a tale as old as time. For some, it’s worked out; for others, it has ruined. Dead Mail has a deep sense of interrogating the human limits of success and chasing money. How far are you willing to go to get what you want? What are you going to do if you need to push someone else’s boundaries? How far are you willing to push them?
The post office is exploited to every inch of its walls to up the stakes of the perilous kidnapping.
For Trent, it’s all the way. Portrayed with so many layers that the whole film becomes a pressure cooker ready to blow, John Fleck pulls and pushes the stakes of the film, with the help of Sterling Macer Jr. (a standout for me — chef’s kiss) as Josh, his unwilling victim.
One thing the film doesn’t compromise on is its own journey. It doesn’t make it easy for itself, with a complex portrayal of the kidnapper, Trent, who shows enough restraint and genuine human regret that it doesn’t numb the horror — it elevates it. Macer Jr., with his deeply empathetic terror hole-punched by his intense fights for survival, and Fleck with his sometimes manic displays of having to think every next step through, clash against each other to make the whole ordeal unsettling.
Will Trent let Josh go? Are his ambitions so vast that he would murder someone? What happens then if he can’t complete what he set out to do? Fleck and Macer Jr. are masterful in their instincts to know when to release and when to keep things bubbling under the surface, making their scenes together electric.
If you like 80s horror films, liminal spaces, and Hitchcock levels of tension, you’ll love Dead Mail, it’s out on Shudder from tomorrow. Give it a watch now it’s finally made its way to home’s across the land after a successful festival run.
Speaking of festival run, Andy interview Dead Mail’s directors here
Watch Dead Mail on Shudder
Sampira’s Archive – Dead Mail (2024)
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