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I was somewhat hyped for this one as it was advertised to have the same producer as Late Night With The Devil which was excellent. Unfortunately, I have to say that as a lover of both Analog Horror and synthesizers, Dead Mail just didn't hit for me.

On the plus side, the atmosphere is very well done. I really enjoyed the slightly surrealist throw-back vibe and aesthetically they did a great job. It's not too too far off from other similar modern artsy, claustrophobic horror films, but no complaints from me here.

The movie starts off quite well and I found the Jasper character/story to be engaging and I was really curious to see where it led.

Unfortunately, we don't get all that much of it before it cuts to a prolonged flashback of how the kidnapping occurs. I enjoyed the Josh character and watching him carrying out the vision of his dream synth. Unfortunately though, at this point the movie completely flatlines. It becomes increasingly grating, slow, and tedious. Whatever story was being developed is lost as the film becomes entirely style over substance. The actors and the look/feel of the film are fine, but the whole thing just crawls at a glacial pace without providing anything particularly engaging to latch onto. I quickly lost interest in the characters and the (lack of) story and turned it off. I certainly don't care enough to go back and finish it.

Lots of potential for sure, but nothing to keep the viewer hooked outside of aesthetic.

I was pretty confident that Azrael was either going to be really impressive, or really terrible - absolutely no in-between. And well, it was terrible.

It's visually impressive with some great gore and a very strong atmosphere. Potentially it could have worked better as a short film in an anthology. However, the pointlessness of the cheap gimmick that drives the movie serves as its downfall and renders the good aspects moot.

The writing is not strong enough to bring purpose nor subtlety to the no-talking concept, rendering it merely a shallow gimmick. Without communication, the movie feels incredibly bland and flat, and as such never draws in the viewer.

Humans are social creatures. Even without talking we communicate in myriad ways - body language, gesticulation, writing, etc. However, the actual ramifications of no one talking on both the individuals and the community is not considered here. Everyone seems to have forgotten how to communicate entirely, despite living in a tribal society with constant human interaction. Instead, every character comes across as a brain-damaged caveman who runs around looking confused and shocked at all times with no ability to express anything to anyone else.

Every interaction feels like the actors want to talk, but know they're not allowed to so instead they just look awkward and confused. I chalk this up to weak directing. What exactly were they even going for? Who knows.

Overall this one is nothing more than its shallow gimmick that delivers nothing of substance. To be fair, I tapped out after 30-40 minutes so maybe it gets better. But even if it does - if the movie isn't strong enough to hook the viewer in that time than it doesn't matter what the rest of it is like. Avoid.

The majority of this movie is surprisingly decent for a low budget, one-location film. Aesthetically the house looks pretty good (aside from some weird lighting choices), the actors all perform adequately, and the entire thing slowly builds up into a seemingly layered and interesting mystery.

While not terribly exciting, I enjoyed the slow progression as the scope of the mystery expanded and we see the characters do stranger and more intense things. I felt like they did a good job making every character seem shady to where a variety of major twist(s) could be plausible and applicable to any (or all) of them, and I was genuinely curious to find out how everything was interconnected.

The creature aspect of the movie is done well considering the film's limitations. You do actually see it from time to time and there are some genuinely creepy practical effects used for it. There is some cheesy stuff too (both in terms of effects and scene where the creature is present), but it doesn't ruin it. Honestly, I wish they had just done a straight creature-feature with the creature being a central character/villain instead of the whole "mystery" aspect where you don't know if the creature is real or not, and I would've liked them to cut out some of the various other things going which reduce the focus on the creature and give ol' spiny some more screen time.

All the serious problems with the film come from the ending. The entire thing is very obviously building to a major reveal which should explain all the weirdness that the audience has been witnessing. Unfortunately, the ending fails COMPLETELY.

It feels like they were writing the story as they went and didn't have an ending in mind but thought "eh, we'll figure it out when we get there". Then the time came and they still didn't have anything that could adequately explain things, so they instead opted for something easy and generic which fails to actually line up with anything that was introduced in the movie.

The ending is cliché and a total cop-out. If you like to try to predict twists than you will absolutely have thought of this but likely dismissed it due to how dumb and nonsensical it would be.

The problem is that the ENTIRE movie hinges on the cleverness of the reveal, and the lame reveal actually ruins, or at least makes insignificant, everything else that happened in the movie. When you go back to the scenarios that played out and take the reveal into account everything actually makes LESS sense and gives the impression it was all a bunch of arbitrary stuff that the writer thought looked or sounded good at the time but doesn't actually tie in or interconnect. Instead of tying things up or providing an explanation, it just introduces a bunch of questions and plot holes.

It's a shame about the ending; this was a solid 5-6 for most of its duration, but, as I stated, the ending makes literally every other aspect of the movie worse, so it's impossible to give it a good overall rating. Worth a watch if you've run out of other horror, but don't have any great expectations.