Raise your hand if you love receiving packages! Keep it raised if you love receiving unexpected “surprise” packages! Now raise your other hand if you keep receiving packages until it literally drives you insane and takes over your life! For those of you with hands still in the air, watch Russell Goldman’s first full length feature, Sender and you’ll begin to cringe when spotting that delivery truck coming around the bend towards your house. Yikes!  

Lisa Barr (mega talented scream queen, Jamie Lee Curtis perfects a non-Laurie Strode role!) appears to be a lonely, broken woman walking in a leg brace and paralyzed by fear when she opens up a box addressed to her, in the quiet of her cozy home. Hesitantly, she pulls out an old used shin guard and fondly embraces it with sentimental affection.  

Right before she smothers herself with bubble wrap.

What in the world…?  

Julia (the lovely and magnetic Britt Lower) is a struggling alcoholic who attends a nearby church support meeting, uneasily reconnecting with former colleague Dustin, in addition to Whitney, a tough and aloof woman who declines Julia’s request to be her sponsor. Feeling a bit deflated, Julia returns to her new home where she’s been receiving expected packages such as an acrylic paint kit and other household necessities to help with the personal décor as a positive beginning on life without the bottle. When the Smirk delivery guy Charlie (David Dastmalchian in another creepishly perfected role) begins to drop off shipments with suspicious items that Julia hasn’t ordered, the nightmarish descent into madness is ignited.  

Starting with just a lipstick tube which happens to be the exact same color and brand that she uses, Julia shrugs it off as a coincidence and resumes to rebuild her routine after being fired. It’s been 3 months since losing her job, but only 3 weeks of full sobriety. To keep her sanity in check, as the parcels increase from the strained presence of good ‘ole strange but sweet Charlie, Julia’s senses are focused upon him as her potential stalker through these twisted cerebral games and a clusterfuck of crap that is taking over her porch and house.  

While Charlie’s awkwardness increases Julia’s suspicions, her redirection fixates on others such as Dustin with whom she claims to have had a one-night fling (although he denies this), Whitney who has become Julia’s unofficial sponsor much to her own chagrin (Whitney is desperately and brutally honest with her adamancy to have no ties with Julia) and even her own sister, Tatiana who is also trying to find herself through a new career (in real estate) while trying not to enable her substance abusing sibling.  

Who might be responsible for fostering this unwarranted sense of paranoia, and—more importantly, what is their motivation? Her delusions distort her memories, causing growing anxiety and eroding her trust in people and things. Julia's uncertainty about her own judgment has led her to question whether she can reliably tell the difference between what is genuine and what is imagined. What happens to an alcoholic whose psychological collapse has become more intoxicating than the actual alcohol? Sender is one trippy urban thriller with a conceptualized outcome that is simplistically complex. And pretty nasty in nature, if I do say so myself!