Cold Wallet
There’s a reason Steven Soderbergh awarded this nasty little thriller grant money to finish its post-production: Cutter Hodierne’s Cold Wallet is an evocative slice of social satire and nightmare. At its essence, the story has an almost biblical heft when three Reddit lifers and lurkers (Raúl Castillo, Tony Cavalero, and Melonie Diaz) decide to get revenge on a crypto bro billionaire (Josh Brener) who defrauded users of his online currency exchange. But when they break into his house and truss him up for a shakedown, they still wind up playing his games as one by one, he turns them against each other. The 21st century in a nutshell.
Cuckoo
Cuckoo and Immaculate made for a great double feature for me at SXSW. Both move into bonkers territory that I am here for, and both star Euphoria actresses bringing their full might to quirky horror flicks. In this case, it’s Hunter Schafer as a teen who is uprooted from her home in the States to a resort in the German Alps run by a mad scientist—played by Dan Stevens, clearly enjoying being deliciously creepy—and with some sort of creature roaming the area. The less said about the plot of this film, written and directed by Tilman Singer (Luz), the better. And frankly, the less you know about the particular nature of cuckoo birds, the better. Cuckoo is super weird and immensely watchable. And the trio of Singer, Schafer, and Stevens are damn compelling together, and I was left hungry for another collaboration from them.
Dead Mail
Filmmakers Kyle McConaghy and Joe DeBoer delve into ‘80s lo-fi horror and neo-noir thrills with their genre-bending indie flick, Dead Mail. The movie opens with a man (Sterling Macer Jr.) desperately trying to mail a letter altering someone before he is brutally subdued, setting the stage for an obsessive mystery. When dead letter investigator Jasper (Tomas Boykin) receives the letter, he sets out to learn more about the ominous note before encountering a strange man named Trent (John Fleck) who has recently become Jasper’s neighbor.
Dead Mail is really a movie about obsession, with each of its main characters fixated on different things, some going to murderous lengths to maintain their interests. The movie is also a love letter to a more analog era, from plot elements like electronic instrumentation right down to its evocative sound design and soundtrack. Moody and led by an impressive cast operating at the height of their powers, Dead Mail is all killer, no filler, drawing audiences deeper and deeper into the dark mystery at its core.
Desert Road
The desert can be an awe-inspiring, expansive space, but also frighteningly overwhelming and capable of holding its own dark, sinister secrets. This sensibility lies at the center of Desert Road, a lean, mean indie thriller written and directed by Shannon Triplett as her debut feature film. The movie centers on a young woman, played by Kristine Forseth, whose car breaks down in the middle of a drive through the American Southwest as she leaves Los Angeles. While waiting for help, the woman is put off by a variety of strange figures in the desert around her, including a nearby gas station attendant (Max Mattern), with her situation only growing more harrowing as the sun sets.
Rapidly leaping right into the unsettling premise, Desert Road is tautly paced and keeps its audience off-balance as it heightens the stakes and throws plenty of narrative curveballs to keep viewers on their toes. Standing at the movie’s center stage is Triplett and Mattern, with Triplett perfectly capturing the anxiety that comes with her character’s increasingly dire circumstance, joined by veteran actors Frances Fisher and Beau Bridges in memorable supporting roles. With its surprising flourishes, the fewer details one knows about Desert Road going in, the better. Instead savor the twists and turns and absolutely gorgeous cinematography of the Southwest desert.
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