Russell Goldman’s feature debut, Sender, based on his short film Return to Sender, is more outlandish dark comedy thriller than horror flick, although it has elements of the latter as well. The filmmaker has an impressive singular style that’s visually kinetic and quite mesmerizing.
Julia (Britt Lower) lost her job and began her road to sobriety three weeks ago. Now she is desperately trying to put the pieces of her life together and has moved into her own suburban rental, which she is trying to make her own via online shopping at Smirk (basically Amazon). But a heck of a lot more packages are being delivered than she ordered. Julia’s delivery driver, Charlie (David Dastmalchian), agrees to look into the curious situation.
At a recovery meeting she meets and insults a frazzled and cutting Whitney (Rhea Seehorn), who refuses to be her sponsor. Julia periodically calls her anyway. Meanwhile her sister, Tat (Anna Baryshnikov), is worried about her and insists on moving in. Julia, also, keeps reliving past drunken flirty moments with a former co-worker and stocky older man. And the packages keep coming and piling up–faster than she can open them–and no one at Smirk seems to want to take any responsibility for the orders. Is this a brushing scam or someone playing a mean trick or is it all happening in Julia’s addled, paranoid wet-brained mind?
Interspersed throughout Julia’s wacky narrative are snippets of scenes involving Lisa Barr (Jamie Lee Curtis, yikes), a woman who also received packages she didn’t order, doing horrific things to her own face. But what does she have to do with the plot? (That question, I would argue, never really gets answered, not satisfactorily anyway).
The utter cinematic insanity is exceptionally captured by Gemma Doll-Grossman’s deliberately unnerving cinematography and punctuated by Gavin Brivik’s disturbing score.
Goldman has a way with tapping into our reliance on online shopping to create something disconcerting and disquieting, although sometimes his clever script is a bit too enigmatic.
No matter because Lower keeps the proceedings grounded in something real. She’s a cinematic force here delivering a bizarre, powerhouse, off-the-cliff-without-a-parachute-and-down-the-rabbit-hole-with-giddy-glee performance that’s just as good as her Emmy-winning Severance turn—which is brilliant. Stay for the credits to see even more of her inspired lunacy.
The entire ensemble is fab with Dastmalchian particularly sweet and deadpan. And Seehorn doing the most with a too-small part.
The big reveal is a bit of a letdown and not really all that horror-ific, but it does explain things, something too many of today’s thrillers never bother to do.
I dare you not to be rattled by this gem.
Sender is currently seeking distribution.
