Based on the video game from Kadokawa games, and a remake of the 2016 Japanese film also called Root Letter (actually √ Letter, which makes it extra geeky because you need to know mathematical operating signs to get that one!).  Full disclosure — this reviewer has never seen the game or the Japanese film, so for all practical purposes we are walking into an original film.

The story is simple – high school students Carlos (Danny Ramirez) and Sarah (Keana Marie) live in different states. They have been paired together as part of a national pen-pal program. Carlos has made some questionable life choices; Sarah’s friends are starting to get into drug dealing. But they find in each other a kindred spirit. Both have fathers missing and mothers unavailable (Carlos’s was deported; Sarah’s is addicted to opioids), and bond over their similar circumstances. Their letters create a deep friendship which reads both true in the day and age of Facebook friends and long-distance relationships over the internet, and odd, in that they do it through letters because if they’re that close then why did they never think to email or connect through social media?

The program requires they reveal no personal information, but they trust each other and so share addresses. Then Carlos receives a letter from Sarah saying she killed someone and she does not know what to do. The remaining two-thirds of the film concerns flashbacks as Carlos goes to Sarah’s high school and hometown to find out what happened to her, a fairly-standard thriller in which Carlos (and the audience) will learn Sarah’s sad fate at the end of the film, with some twists and turns along the way.

Root Letter is small and simple, a circle of rural friends who get involved in the local pill-selling scene and discover it is neither as easy nor as fun, and certainly not as lucrative as they thought, and the outsider who enters the scene to find out what happened to his missing friend. The performances are all fairly solid with Ramirez as a stand out, his quiet intensity and natural charisma render his quest both plausible and worth following. Likewise, the cinematography and direction are competent – the story is told well.

The narrative just never quite reaches the level of the truly significant.  We are brief voyeurs into this moment, but never fully invested in the outcome. The early scenes of the exchange of letters is quite well done – he gets her to listen to Slayer for the first time and later in the film she quotes their lyrics. It’s a nice moment of how they are shaping each other. Sadly, as soon as he comes looking for her, their interactions cease and it becomes a bit of a paint-by-numbers whodunit. Given that, for a low budget film it delivers its story and its reach never exceeds its grasp. I suspect Root Letter will have a built-in fanbase from video game fans, but it should also find an audience that will appreciate it on its own merits.

6 out of 10