Dead Mail

Dead Mail

A stylish retro thriller set in the deep 80s.

A man crawls bleeding into a mailbox. He manages to drop a letter into it but is quickly dragged away by a faceless perpetrator. The envelope ends up in the lost mail department and a seasoned postal officer sets out to explain the mystery. A bonkers ride begins.

‘Dead Mail’ is a stylish retro thriller. It is set in the late 1980s. The picture is grainy, with cinematography reminiscent of a shabby-quality detective TV series. At times it is a detective story, at times a dark and brutal thriller in which we see events through the eyes of a murderer.

“Dead Mail” sucks you into your cinema seat from the very first scene. You may break out in a sweat from tension during the screening, and you will want to look away a few times. It is not because the macabre is flying off the screen, but because the skilfully built tension can be almost unbearable. This year’s festival gem proves that a film is not made on a big budget or with a cast of well-known names, but with brilliant acting and an excellent concept. It is noir cinema at its best.

The film made quite a splash at the SXSW festival, was also screened in Toronto, received great reviews and made rising stars of American genre cinema out of the directorial duo of Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy. Spotlight is upon the dazzling John Fleck in a truly delightful but downright nasty role.