Anomaly Film Festival Coverage
Dead Mail review
A crime thriller not quite like any other.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Dead Mail
Directed by Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy
Written by Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy
Starring Sterling Macer Jr., John Fleck, Tomas Boykin, Susan Priver, Micki Jackson, Nick Heyman, Sean Heyman and Aaron Phifer
Dead Mail Review
The Anomaly Film Festival kicked off their Friday night offerings with Dead Mail…a fittingly odd movie. It was preceded by the short film Hey Man from writer/director James Oxyer. The short consists of two friends having a conversation by a campfire. When Trevor (Michael Warker) opens up to Cole (Alex Gagliardi) about his emotions surrounding the impending death of his mother…Cole takes the opportunity to get a few things of his own off his chest. Hey Man had the theater rolling the deeper and more specific Cole gets about what’s worrying him. A fun short that fit well with Dead Mail’s own strange tone.
Dead Mail is a little harder to describe. It begins with Josh (Sterling Macer Jr.) briefly breaking free from his captivity to shove a blood stained note for help into a nearby mailbox. His captor retrieves him…but fails to get to him in time to get the letter. The movie will spend the rest of its runtime revolving around this incident. We see the backstory of the two men…and the aftermath of the note arriving at the post office. The story changes perspective a few times…but it keeps a consistently strange and original tone. More on that in a bit.
Following Josh’s written cry for help…Dead Mail shifts its focus to Jasper (Tomas Boykin). Jasper is the head of the post office’s Dead Letters division. A quasi-detective that is remarkably good at his job. We watch Jasper work his magic (with a bit of outside help from a foreign party) discovering the origin and destination of a piece of jewelry. Seeing Jasper work walks a fine line between serious and comedy so well that you’ll be unsure if you’re supposed to be giggling at the concept. That is the tone that makes Dead Mail so enjoyable to watch. The actions the characters in the story take are always serious. The ridiculousness of what causes them to take those actions is what makes them quietly hilarious. Jasper treats a piece of lost mail like he’s tracking the Zodiac killer.
Dead Mail uses that concept to an even bigger effect within its main story. Although Jasper (and two work associates) are trying to solve the mystery of the bloody note…we find out what’s happening very early in the story. It involves Josh’s work as a keyboard technician. Keyboard…as in…the popular in the 1980s (where Dead Mail takes place) musical instrument. He’s working to make the wind wood setting on the keyboard as high quality as the piano setting.
If you were around for the heyday of the keyboard…you’ll understand how perversely funny this is. I had a keyboard or two when I was a kid…at least one had these setting that could turn the keys into drumbeats or, yes, a horn section. The horns always sounded the worst. No one used this “feature”. Trent (John Fleck) really likes the horn setting. So much, in fact, that he partners with Josh on perfecting it. The movie doesn’t hide that this partnership ends in a kidnapping…so I won’t either. Trent’s actions are deadly serious. Over a setting on a keyboard that no one else cares about. That’s Dead Mail in a nutshell. Characters perpetrating or solving the crime of the century…if that catalyst for that crime was the dumbest thing you could think of.
The cast does a universally great job playing things like they’re in a straightforward crime thriller. Because, technically, they are. There are real crimes happening. There is a real investigation into it. It’s just…about something that is objectively hilarious. It’s a brilliant way to make your story stand out. If Dead Mail was about something more important…it might be just another crime thriller. Because its setup is so quietly comical…it becomes a memorable and entertaining entry in the genre instead. You’ll end up with a sly smile on your face every time you remember that these actions began with someone really caring about a keyboard that makes more realistic horn sounds.
Once you recognize the film’s purposeful choice to underscore its serious nature with a ridiculous inciting incident…the work of the cast becomes even more impressive. Tomas Boykin plays Jasper with the brilliance and drive of a David Fincher detective. As he finds out who sent mail they can’t deliver. John Fleck delivers an antagonist worthy of John Wick villain. Because he really enjoys the sound of wind woods played on a keyboard. The audience at the Anomaly Film Festival often seemed unsure if they were meant to giggle at certain moments they clearly wanted to. If you read this paragraph again I’m pretty sure that you’ll know the answer to their question.
Scare Value
Dead Mail nails the unique tone that it’s going for. It investigates a mystery that we already know the answer to…but it gives us that knowledge for the best of reasons. Knowing why things are happening makes the things that happen entertaining in a new way. An impressive feat pulled off by everyone involved.
