Dead Mail, on Shudder

You have to give the USPS dead letter office workers credit. They found a way to deliver all those letters to Santa at the end of Miracle on 34^th Street. This case will be a lot less fun for them. It would be easier to assume the blood-smeared note begging for help is a hoax, but postal sleuth Jasper Lawrence just can’t let it go in Joe DeBoer & Kyle McConaghy’s Dead Mail, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

Lawrence is revered by his co-workers, Ann Lankford and Bess Greer, for his ability to find the intended recipients of valuable lost mail. However, he has a secret resource, Swedish intelligence analyst Renee Ogaard, who can perform the sort of database searches we take for granted today, with 1980s technology. Part of Lawrence’s mystique is his sad backstory. Having fallen on hard times, he still lives in a low-income housing facility that is essentially one-step up from a homeless shelter.

Maybe that is why he refuses to abandon the captive who wrote the note. Providentially, the chain tethering Joshua Ivey was just long enough to reach the mailbox in front Trent Whittington’s house. Unfortunately, the only legible tracking information is the rural route, which leaves a number of suspects. Rather ominously, Whittington also knows Ivey’s note is out there, somewhere in the system, because the mail was picked up before he could figure how to best pry open the box.

Essentially, the third act is a long flashback, explaining Whittington’s history with Ivey and how things reached this horrific stage. This is a bit of a mistake, because it unbalances the film, taking too much time away from the postal setting and characters, who are immediately compelling. Of course, that also means the first and third acts work very well indeed.

The gritty, grainy, retro 1980s direct-to-video look of Dead Mail is also lethally effective. It captures the look and texture of its milieu without ever indulging in kitsch, irony, or tongue-in-cheek snark. Arguably, there are times the film feels a little too real.

Regardless, Tomas Boykin is terrific as Lawrence, giving him a sad dignity that ultimately envelops the entire film. John Fleck (who recurred on Star Trek: Enterprise, probably making him the most prominent cast-member) is creepy as heck as Whittington, because he shows just how easily an ostensibly functional person can slip into utter insanity. Micki Jackson and Susan Priver are also appealingly grounded and unpretentious as Lankford and Greer. They create the sort of characters that, over time, you would value as co-workers.

Indeed, the cast greatly contribute to the film’s unnervingly convincing illusion of reality. The documentary-like where-are-they-now during the closing credits is another nice touch. Impressively, DeBoer and McConaghy turned their limited resources into a virtue, creating a very distinctive and very dark genre vision. Recommended for its considerable merits, Dead Mail starts streaming tomorrow (4/18) on Shudder.