DEAD MAIL Co-Director Kyle McConaghy Discusses Midwest Vibes and Creating Offbeat Horror

Sterling Macer Jr. in DEAD MAIL | Image courtesy of Shudder

By Shannon McGrew

In DEAD MAIL, on a desolate, Midwestern country road, a bound man (Sterling Macer Jr.) crawls towards a remote postal box, managing to slide a blood-stained plea-for-help message into the slot before a panicking figure closes in behind him. The note makes its way to the desk of Jasper (Tomas Boykin), a seasoned ‘dead letter’ investigator at a 1980s midwestern post office. As he begins to piece together the letter’s origins, it leads him down a violent, unforeseen path to a kidnapped keyboard engineer and his eccentric business associate. 

For the release of DEAD MAIL, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with co-director Kyle McConaghy. During their chat, they discussed everything from the film’s inspiration and grounded 80s aesthetic to the DIY set design. 

Thank you for speaking with me today, Kyle. Can you share how the story for DEAD MAIL came together?

Kyle McConaghy: Joe DeBoer and I directed it together. Joe read this concept of a dead letter office, where valuable undeliverable mail goes to die, or someone investigates to find the rightful recipient. I wrote some mediocre version of the first scene of the film, and we were intrigued by this guy's army crawling to a postal box, bound and bloodied, and seeing where this letter he put in the postal box goes. We’ve always wanted to incorporate a synthesizer engineer, and I don’t know why, but we found a way to fit that in as well [Laughs]. 

I appreciated that even though the film is set in the ’80s, it doesn’t lean on the typical neon-soaked aesthetic. Instead, you opted for a more muted, timeless palette. Could you discuss that creative decision?

Kyle McConaghy: We’re both from not prestigious Midwestern cities, and looking back at photos of some of our relatives, whether it’s 1978 or 1991, they look the same. It’s hard to place how old my mom was in a photo. So, we wanted to capture some of that bland, timeless Midwestern aesthetic from the pre-cellphone era, which was always the driving aesthetic force. 

John Fleck in DEAD MAIL | Image courtesy of Shudder

John Fleck and Sterling Mason Jr. have such great on-screen chemistry and play off each other so naturally—even with Sterling’s character in such a dire situation. What was the casting process like for bringing these two together?

Kyle McConaghy: We lucked out, they are both phenomenal actors who have done so many cool things before they did DEAD MAIL. Sterling Macer Jr was a friend that I met here in Los Angeles. He was looking for help for a low-budget film that he was directing, and we became friends through that process. That was almost a decade ago, so I’ve been very lucky to have been friends with him this long and to be a collaborator with him. 

One of our lead actors, Susan Priver, who plays Bess, is a fantastic actor and also contributed to the script and produced the film. She was friends with John and recommended him for this part. When we met John, we knew he was perfect for this role beyond what our initial version of Trent was like, which was a little more wooden, a little more like Charlton Heston. However, he brought some life to that role, to say the least. 

When it came to shaping the horror elements of this film, what were some of the inspirations you drew from?

Kyle McConaghy: For this film, we never really thought of it as horror as we were writing it. It just happened that one of the characters would kidnap the other. I don’t know if I would say this is horror, but as a kid, we had these Mormon VHS tapes, and they were fascinating. One of them was called the Buttercream Gang. I’ve tried to look for it, but I couldn’t find it; however, it captures something distinctly non-Hollywood about the time. Even just wanting to capture that strange aesthetic similar to David Lynch. We don’t want to copy things too much or take too much inspiration because all the influences are already baked in. 

What were some of the biggest challenges you ran into while creating this film? 

Kyle McConaghy: Six locations created that one house. We filmed it all in Los Angeles and pieced together different sets and houses. Two or three separate exteriors and four interiors. The bathroom that you see is my bathroom in my apartment. Payton Jane, the production designer, and I spray-painted the floor and wallpaper, the whole thing [Laughs]. It’s very much a smorgasbord of locations, so that was a challenge. 

Is there anything you hope fans of horror take away from the film? 

Kyle McConaghy: Hopefully, these characters like Josh (Sterling Macer Jr), Bess (Susan Priver), and Ann (Micki Jackson), feel like real humans. We love films that feel like a unique experience. For example, the first time Joe and I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, we had never seen anything like it, and we hope that people experience something similar with our film. The movie is also a testament to the incredible actors and crew who did such a great job. I’m glad they’ll get to see those performances and the work of people behind the camera. 

DEAD MAIL is now available to stream on Shudder.