At the height of the “torture porn” debate a couple decades ago, there were a number of films involving characters abducted for prolonged, sadistic captivity — usually young women. A particular nadir was the unimaginatively titled 2007 thriller “Captivity,” which featured Elisha Cuthbert as a blonde fashion model in a serial killer’s clutches, and had the distinction of being quite possibly the trashiest joint ever directed by an Oscar-nominated director (Roland Joffe, of “The Killing Fields”). The controversy around the subgenre popularized by “Saw” may have ebbed since, but “torture porn” haven’t entirely gone away. There’s still a frequent unsavory whiff of exploitation and voyeurism to kidnapping films.
Just one of the many virtues to “Dead Mail,” streaming on Shudder on Friday after a SXSW premiere in 2024, is that it traverses familiar story terrain without ever feeling like a wallow in cruel psychosexual gawking. In fact, writer-directors Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConoghy’s second feature doesn’t necessarily check all the boxes that might label it “horror,” though it does feel like it belongs to that category. This bizarre tale, facetiously framed as being based on real events, has Sterling Macer Jr. and John Fleck as two middle-aged men whose bond over shared hobbyist enthusiasms warps into a harrowing captor/captive relationship. Set in the 1980s Midwest with a mix of the drab and the eccentric, “Dead Mail” is an effective, twisty thriller with a singular edge of off-kilter black comedy.
The standard, if duly jarring, prologue finds a shackled African-American man plunging from an isolated home’s front door, literally crawling out to deposit a bloodied note in a mailbox at the curb — just before he’s brutally apprehended by his apparent keeper. As openings go, it’s pretty torture-porny, suggesting we’re seeing just one victim in a probable line of lethal, potentially racist abuses. But once the screenplay begins winding back and forth in time to reveal a bigger picture, it turns out that assumption isn’t quite accurate — though the truth isn’t comforting, either.
Just skirting confusion in its cut-up chronology, that script eventually reveals the root of the situation being a chance meeting between two nerdy guys interested in the development of synthesizer music technology — think next-step (for the mid-1980s) variations on Wendy Carlos’ “Switched-On Bach.” At a computer convention, Trent (Fleck) expresses excitement over programs that Josh (Macer) has devised for keyboard, mimicking conventional instrumentation.
Trent is a somewhat invasive, fussbudget. But guileless Josh sees nothing wrong in their subsequent friendship, particularly as his new pal sometimes gifts him expensive parts needed for further experimentation. However, the glimmers of instability we sense crank to full wattage when Trent discovers Josh has a job offer from a Japanese electronics company — something he views as a profound betrayal of “their” work. Soon, Josh finds himself a prisoner in Trent’s heavily fortified basement, his pleas for freedom falling on ears as deaf as Samantha Eggar’s did in the mother of all kidnapping-creep movies, 1965’s “The Collector.”
It looks dire for Josh. But somehow he does manage to get that hand-scrawled note out, triggering a chain reaction of further events. Sans address, it falls into the hands of a USPS dead-letter investigator (Tomas Boykin as Jasper), who nearly dismisses it as a prank before having second thoughts. Acutely aware of this intel leak, Trent goes to great lengths plugging it up again. That results in violence experienced first as a tragedy, then as a nagging mystery by Jaspers’ post office coworkers. In particular, Ann (Micki Jackson) does not accept the explanation offered by police (and planted by Trent), enlisting fellow clerk Bess (Susan Priver) in some amateur sleuthing. Their efforts ultimately lead to Trent’s door, and a climax that works up a good froth of suspense. Even then, however, “Dead Mail” doesn’t deliver quite what you expect.
It is full of surprises, not just in plot twists but also in its characters’ idiosyncrasies and general ambiance. While DeBoer and McConoghy showed considerable promise in their 2020 debut “BAB,” that oddball mix of retro-western melodrama and mad-scientist thriller didn’t pull its ideas together with the same taut focus demonstrated here. And the Reagan-era setting of “Dead Mail” is depicted in a fashion as distinctively time-warped as Eisenhower’s was in their prior feature. Here, the ’80s are an alternative reality suspended somewhere between vintage Sears catalog and “Eraserhead.”
Payton Jane’s production design, McConoghy’s cinematography, KerriAnne Savastano’s costumes and the location choices (Greater Los Angeles substituting for somewhere in the vicinity of Peoria) all create a subtly alienating environment without resorting to nostalgic caricature. The creators heighten a pervasive, ironical flavor by deploying electronic music written by themselves and other modern composers, as well as classical greats performed on synthesizers.
The actors likewise tow a line between the naturalistic and surreal, maintaining poker faces at each point on that continuum. Apart from level-headed Ann, everyone is a bit “off,” whether mildly so (i.e. Josh), or living on their own private planet. It’s not particularly surprising to discover that gainfully employed Jasper nonetheless lives in a men’s shelter, or that he has connections to Scandinavian intelligence agents (one played by Nick Heyman, the lead in “BAB”). “A little bit mad” seems to be the norm, allowing true madmen like Trent to go undetected.
Leading man Fleck first attracted attention as one of the “NEA Four” performance artists defunded by censorious U.S. Senate pressure 35 years ago. As Trent, he limns a figure very close to the retro, regressive stereotype of the crazily possessive “If I can’t have you, no one will” gay villain last commonly seen onscreen in the actual 1980s. But this hysterical closet case may be too repressed to even recognize any sexual undertow to his jailer role. He’s alarming because his single-mindedness is both irrational and ingenious — he’s an extreme version of that everyday social hazard, the control freak. As manic and frightening as Trent is, he retains a certain pathos. There’s a grown man imprisoned in his basement, we realize, because that’s the only way he can think to have a friend.
