RED LETTER DAY: Like THE PURGE, Only Lazier

Premise: Everyone throughout Canada receives a red envelope in the mail ordering them to kill a neighbor picked specifically through online activity matching similar traits to the recipient who has been sent the same letter themselves. With their town thrown into a state of paranoia, a single mom and her teenage kids are in a fight for their lives as everything descends into chaos.

Execution: Overly written dialogue akin to a workplace training video, explaining the goings-on of this drab dull screenplay while setting up a half-interesting plot with no actual payoff.

If Red Letter Day sounds like a letdown then good. Maybe now you can sympathize with the slog of watching this weak horror film.

Who Talks Like This?

Forced only to sit through a one hour and fifteen-minute movie, you’d think something as retched as Red Letter Day would be easier to stomach. Alas, no. If anything, the pathetic runtime proves further how undercooked this all truly is. Nothing is set up or executed. Instead, the audience is constantly reminded how our online presence is going to be the downfall of society through stilted, boring dialogue. Everyone blathers on and on about their family’s off-beat idiosyncrasies while coincidentally laying out their entire history to one another for the sake of the audience. Subtlety takes a backseat, making every conversation nothing more than info vomit that could have been shown and not told. What’s worse, the main characters are decent enough leads to root for, but their final outcome is arduously dumb.

Honestly, the premise of Red Letter Day is kind of brilliant. An online terrorist cell pits neighbors against each other by fueling their ignorant paranoia. Farfetched, yet workable as a storyline. Unfortunately, the film squanders any sense of dread or creativity by feeding its characters mouthfuls of obvious points. What we are left with is lame back and forth over-explaining of the plot in a way normal human beings would never banter. Social media also plays a villainous role in all of this only to be driven home by a constant barrage of nods to any and all forms of digital presence. Though for a movie so hung up on the world’s obsession with an online presence, it sure does rely heavily on snail mail to complete its endgame. I can’t remember the last time I opened a letter that had anything viable to convey.

Written and directed by Cameron Magowan, this is his first full-length feature after a slew of short films. Ironic, given the paltry runtime of this wasted premise. Sorry, to hark on how long this is, but to shortchange an audience by lazily bogging down your screenplay with shabby dialogue while barely bringing the main concept to a boil is nothing short of enraging. Worldbuilding is a term I’ve grown to cherish as a critic. Showing, not telling tends to be the popular consensus when judging such attempts and Magowan could have benefitted by letting events unfold rather than explaining every step of what is happening on screen. One of the most difficult tasks professors give first-year film students is to make an understandable short silent film. Learning to let the camera tell the story. With my bias as a writer, I love snappy dialogue as much as the next, though to tell a story without saying a word is a powerful skill every filmmaker needs to hone in their career and Red Letter Day fails to do so.

Family Matters

If I enjoyed anything about the film, I would have to commend the off-center family dynamic of the Edwards consisting of the cool single mom Melanie played by Dawn Van De Schoot, her rebellious, dating the older guy, daughter Madison and awkwardly likable son Timothy. The first third of this movie focuses on these three as if they might not get along as a cohesive unit. Thankfully, despite their completely different personality traits, the clan bonds in a solid and original way. Normally, the broken mother would have no control over her headstrong daughter and introvert son, but here they seem to genuinely like one another, breaking free of the usual tropes.

This does not excuse the rest of the characters whose motivations for participating in Red Letter Day are paper thin. There’s little rationality in how people act having only opened their mail a few minutes into the film. The problem is addressed but quickly gets out of hand through obnoxious neighbors turning bloodthirsty without weighing any of their options. Now, I understand this was the point of the story where irrationality favors the scared and all that, but jeez, this escalates quickly and to a silly, unearned, end.

I’m Not Mad, Just Disappointed

My biggest gripe, in the long run, is the squandered potential of Red Letter Day. There was something there. Something smart and original. The spark of a good idea wasting its time trying to explain itself rather than just going for the throat. Even in its runtime, the movie disappoints by the sheer laziness of never pushing the screenplay to a possibly climactic finale. Instead, we get weak family non-drama and a series of uninteresting horror moments relying way more on blood than guts.

There are far better horror films to watch this Halloween and Film Inquiry would love to hear what keeps you up at night? Leave a suggestion in the comment section and keep the conversation going.

Red Letter Day will be released in US theaters on November 5, 2019. For all international release dates, see here.