PLOT: Newly sober, Julia (Britt Lower) is unnerved by a barrage of packages that start arriving from an online retailer, Smirk. No one knows who is sending the packages or why, and the nonstop deliveries begin to threaten Julia’s sobriety.
REVIEW: Sender starts with a misguided bait-and-switch. The film opens ominously, with a woman (played by Jamie Lee Curtis—who also produced—in a cameo) receiving a package that triggers her to violence. It seems to set up that Sender is going to be a genre film, but after this random opening, which never really re-enters the plot in a meaningful way, Sender settles into becoming a fairly standard recovery drama with some light thriller elements.
The mystery—who keeps sending Julia these boxes and why—is never that compelling, and the eventual resolution doesn’t make much sense. Yet, what keeps Sender from being a total write-off is the fact that Severance star Britt Lower, in a leading role, makes for a compelling protagonist. A former alcoholic whose antics got her fired from her last job three weeks ago, she’s on a shaky path to sobriety. Her tenuous grip on not drinking isn’t helped by her overbearing sister (Anna Baryshnikov), who resents her moving out on her own and won’t leave her alone.
Without Lower in the lead, Sender would be a slog. Writer-director Russell Goldman delivers a good-looking film, but it’s pretty familiar stuff, and the notion to go surreal at times never pays off. The vignette with Curtis feels like it comes from another movie and is clumsily returned to, with a gore moment that sticks out like a sore thumb in a movie that’s essentially about recovery.
Some of the supporting roles also don’t add up to much, with the great David Dastmalchian as a Smirk courier who develops a kind of quasi-romance with Julia, although you never quite buy that one would end up with the other. Dastmalchian is made to play his role in an occasionally creepy way, perhaps to ramp up Julia’s paranoia, but given her mental state, it’s hard to believe that at one point it briefly becomes a romance, only to suddenly drop that plotline as well.
Yet, Lower has real star quality and is always worth watching as she sinks her teeth into the self-destructive Julia. She’s matched by a brief turn from Rhea Seehorn as “Whisky” Whitney, a caustic fellow AA member Julia wants as a sponsor. Of everyone, Seehorn, as the gradually recovering Whitney, feels like she’s giving the most authentic performance as a person in AA, although a third-act twist involving her character comes out of absolutely nowhere and just adds to what eventually becomes a confusing, anticlimactic payoff.
It’s always a drag to trash a movie like this—without distribution—at a fest like SXSW, as it’s clear Sender was a passion project for all involved. Perhaps, without the Curtis element—which again feels lifted from another movie—there’s a better version of Sender that might see the light of day. As it is, though, I found this to be a slog.
