Sender (2026) Review

South Florida’s long-running Popcorn Frights Film Festival brought horror fans thrilling new features and chilling classics with one-of-a-kind experiences this year. For its 12th year, audiences were treated to the heartening return of Russell Goldman with his film Sender (2026). This psychological thriller fleshes out Goldman’s short film Return to Sender, which was screened at Popcorn Frights back in 2022, and brings audiences further into a spiral of paranoia, tension, and addiction.

Sender follows Julia, played by Severance’s Britt Lower, as she recovers from addiction in her sister’s rental. After a distant and somewhat awkward AA meeting, Julia continues to try to develop a routine for herself, which happens to include some online shopping. When she starts to receive items she didn’t order, an abundance of them, reality slowly warps around her.

She befriends David Dastmalchian’s (Late Night with the Devil) Charlie, Julia’s Smirk delivery driver, in an attempt to figure out why boxes with seemingly random items keep showing up at her door. All the while, she is managing the overstepping nature of her sister, Tat (Anna Baryshnikov), and desperately seeking support from a reluctant recovery peer, Whitney (Rhea Seehorn). From the possibility of this being a shipping scam, of which a similar victim played by Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, Everything Everywhere All at Once) committed suicide, to a targeted attack by Smirk itself, Julia agonizes over her circumstance.

Britt does a fantastic job portraying a woman whose world is being overtaken by cardboard, packing slips, and fear. Her dedication to this story is visible in the way she shifts from a relatively stable Julia to a full “pin board on the wall” manic woman on a mission. This full display of emotion is perfectly balanced with Dastmalchian’s signature subdued, slightly awkward Charlie, who helps ground not just Julia but us in the audience as well. Apart from the leading performances, Jamie Lee Curtis’ scenes stand out with their emotional density and vulnerability. Her characters’ story looms in the background of this film and amplifies Julia’s dire attempts to break the cycles around her.

Goldman expertly leads this cast through the highs and lows of addiction while building a unique horror that balances terror and abstraction. The uncanniness and high strangeness of Smirk is sandwiched between Julia’s shame and fear, which creates this disorienting experience you just can’t break away from. Sender is an unsettling, modern, darkly entertaining venture into addiction and recovery. It is also a testament to the world of independent horror and how shorts on the film fest circuit can find support to become full features. It will be exciting to see where Goldman goes next!

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