Dead Mail

When an ominous cry for help on a blood-stained scrap of mail is clocked by the staff of a country post office in the American Midwest, it spurs an investigation that circuitously reveals the sordid story of a struggling synthesizer engineer (Sterling Macer Jr.) and his possessive benefactor (John Fleck). Shrewdly set at the precipice of the digital age — that nebulous twilight between the late 1970s and the early 1980s — this analogue-textured thriller borders its central psychodrama within an idiosyncratic community of amateur gumshoes who all keenly contribute to cracking the case.

The most immediately prominent sleuth is Jasper (Tomas Boykin), a diligent mailroom clerk with a knack for rectifying “dead letters,” to use the parlance of the postal service. Aided by his two plucky colleagues (Micki Jackson, Susan Priver) and a Scandinavian hacker (Nick Heyman) thus ensues a genre-bending caper spun with the fetishistic minutiae of a Peter Strickland film and the askew Americana of the Coen Brothers.

Acclaimed for its auspicious premiere at South by Southwest, Dead Mail distinguishes filmmaking duo Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy as consummate stylists who imbue their characters with a disarming sense of authenticity. Though the ruinous conflicts that emerge in their take on archetypal trajectories are reminiscent of thrillers like Misery and Silence of the Lambs, their project is as much a study on human loneliness as it is a meticulous synth-laden amalgamation of patented genre delights.

PETER KUPLOWSKY

Content advisory: violence, horror, themes of suicide, scenes of surgery