It’s almost time to make the annual pilgrimage to the desert for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The event will celebrate its 25th year on the polo fields in Indio, this time with Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber and Karol G topping the lineup.
Whether you’re heading to the festival or watching from home, we’ve compiled a guide for maximizing your Coachella time from what to pack and what parties and pop-ups are open to the public to how to watch from the comfort of your couch.
We’ll have live updates throughout Weekend 1 at latimes.com/coachella. We’re also answering your questions and compiling your tips.
When is Coachella? Where is the venue?
Coachella 2026 runs April 10-12 and 17-19 at the Empire Polo Club at 81-800 Ave. 51 in Indio.
Who is performing at Coachella 2026?
This year’s main stage headliners are Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber and Karol G.
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There’s also a big production from Anyma, presenting the world premiere of Æden, and other top artists include the XX, Nine Inch Noize, Disclosure, the Strokes, Turnstile, Addison Rae, David Byrne, Iggy Pop, Katseye, Sombr and Young Thug. Here’s the full lineup.
Can I still get tickets to Coachella? How much are passes?
Coachella is sold out, but there are still ways to get in. There’s a waiting list via Coachella itself and there’s also an official resale market and secondary sellers.
On the official Coachella resale site, Weekend 1 general admission three-day passes and GA with a shuttle pass are hovering around $1,000; VIP are starting at $1,630 as of April 1.
Weekend 2 starts at $815 for general admission passes and GA with shuttle on the official Coachella resale site while VIP starts at $1,130. Note that the prices fluctuate often.
(For reference, when tickets went on sale in September, they started at $649 for a three-day GA pass for Weekend 1 and $549 for Weekend 2. For VIP, passes for Weekend 1 started at $1,299 and $1,199 for Weekend 2.)
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Beware of secondary sites, but you can find passes there as well. Typically Weekend 2 is cheaper but prices will spike after everyone talks about Weekend 1.
A few things to note: Coachella doesn’t have hard tickets but wristbands. If a deal seems to good to be true, it probably is. Check the policies to see how your purchase is guaranteed if you go the secondary seller route.
Music fans watch Green Day’s headlining set at Coachella in 2025.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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What’s the difference between general admission and VIP passes, and are VIP passes worth it?
No matter what level of pass you have, you can roam around most of the field and get up close to stages. Yes, you can have a GA pass and walk right up to the stage. Of course, if you’re a Belieber trying to do that you’re probably camping out all day Saturday.
If you see those special viewing pits near the stage, the VIP passes do not get you to there. Nor do they get you on stage.
VIP passes do get you a dedicated entrance (closer to what has historically been the yellow lot and the ride share dropoff/pickups) and more exclusive food options in spots like the picturesque Rose Garden next to the Mojave Tent. You also can view the main stage from the 12 Peaks VIP area. And there has been a dedicated VIP entrance for the Yuma Tent in recent years.
When does Coachella release set times?
The festival set times are usually announced a few days before Weekend 1, and then the complaints about conflicts will ensue. In 2025, the set times dropped on April 5. When they land, we’ll share them here.
Recent years have also had notable surprise acts revealed in the set times announcement, including Weezer and Ed Sheeran in 2025, Blink-182 in 2023 and Arcade Fire in 2022.
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The set times are pretty consistent on most stages through both weekends, with minor tweaks — usually the early DJs or acts opening the stages change up between weekends. However, the lineups at the Quasar stage and the Do Lab are different each weekend.
Once set times are released and you’re plotting your own schedule, don’t plan on easily hopping back and forth between the Sahara Tent and most of the other stages. It moved to the far south end of the festival grounds in 2024 and it’s a considerably longer hike than its previous locations. There was a traffic jam trying to get over there in 2024 and in 2025 the festival made some improvements (swapping the Quasar and Do Lab locations) to ease a crowd chokepoint, but you’re still looking at probably a 15-minute walk from the main stage.
When do gates open at Coachella? How late does the music go?
The parking lots open at 11 a.m. daily and the gates open around 1. The curfew is 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday and midnight on Sunday.
What’s the deal with parking? What about the shuttles? Can I take a rideshare? How’s traffic?
Unlike pretty much any other concert in Southern California, general parking is free at Coachella for the day. If you’re driving in, carpool and get there early. There have been years where people have had to park off-site because it’s so packed. Just be sure to note where you parked because at the end of a long day of music, you don’t want to be searching for your car. (Pro tip: Drop a pin in your phone as soon as you park.)
You can take a rideshare to/from Coachella. That lot is near the yellow lot but I always hear horror stories every year.
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Whether you’re driving or taking a rideshare, know that if you stay until the end of the night you’re likely going to be waiting a while.
Pro tip: If you’re driving, leave yourself some snacks that won’t melt and some waters in the car so you have some sustenance if you do get stuck.
The shuttles do require a pass. As of April 1, only Weekend 2 was available to add a pass via the Coachella site and it’s $150. Friends who have stayed on the eastern side of the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs) swear by it, especially if they want to have adult beverages throughout the day.
The worst traffic is on the 10 Freeway the Monday after each weekend. It’s brutal if you’re heading back to L.A. You need to be on the road by 9 a.m. or wait it out until the evening.
Where do I put my stuff? Are there lockers?
There are lockers but they are sold out for both weekends. You are allowed to bring in a backpack 18” x 13” x 8.5” or smaller. If you can travel light, a fanny pack is the way to go, but if you’re planning to bring a hoodie or a beach towel to sit on, your shoulders will be less angry at carrying a backpack over a messenger bag, trust me.
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Is there a place to charge my phone? How can I keep my phone from getting stolen at Coachella?
There are some chargers set up around the field, including throughout the covered Craft Beer Barn, but bring your own cable. It’s worth bringing a power bank with you so you don’t have to wait for your phone to charge.
Everyone knows someone who has had their phone jacked at Coachella. Set up and turn on whatever kind of “Find my phone” app your device has before getting to the desert.
I’ve seen people use fanny packs with tethers inside to further secure phones and also phone lanyards.
A lower-tech option I’ve seen is using safety pins to keep front pockets closed, something that works particularly well with zippered pockets.
I don’t have a place to stay for Coachella yet. What are my options?
Most of your options are going to be massively expensive since we’re down to the wire here (I saw an Airbnb listing for a bed in a laundry room in Thermal coming in at just under $700/night for Weekend 1), but as of April 1, there were still car camping passes available for each weekend for $180, which includes the local transient occupancy tax. Powered car camping, which the Coachella site says gets you a guaranteed spot with a power outlet and access to upgraded showers and bathrooms, runs for $700 with the tax included.
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Coachella attendees get sprayed with water at the Do Lab in 2025.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
What’s the weather going to be like for Coachella and how can I prepare for it?
My best advice: Keep refreshing the forecast. We’ve had an unusually warm start to the year in Southern California, which typically signals that we’ll be roasting at Coachella, but things have thankfully cooled off a little.
If temperatures look mild, consider bringing long sleeves for the evening because it does get cold. As of April 1, the Weather Channel’s 14-day forecast for Weekend 1 has highs in Indio in the upper 80s. Weekend 2 is typically warmer, but last year that wasn’t the case.
Handheld fans (paper or battery-powered) are allowed. I’m not saying my USB-charged fan kept me from a trip to the medical tent in 2025, but I’m not NOT saying it. They’ve had some for sale at the festival in previous years, but it’s cheaper to buy one off-site.
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Plastic personal-sized water misters are allowed in, too, but they have to be empty when you get there.
If you don’t want to stop the fun while you take a break from the heat, the Do Lab is always a good place to catch some shade, dance and cool off.
It’s pretty much a guarantee that you’re going to be in some gnarly wind at some point during the festival, so a face covering like a bandanna or a PPE mask (protects from dust AND COVID) are helpful.
The desert is hot. Are there water stations?
If I’ve learned one thing over the last 18 years I’ve covered Coachella, it’s that dehydration is serious business. However much water you’re drinking, it’s not enough.
Water has been priced at $2 since Coachella started back in 1999, and there are multiple refill stations on-site. You can also bring in an empty refillable container, but it can’t be metal or glass and it has to be 64 ounces or less (even though the Coachella water they’ve sold in recent years is packaged in an aluminum bottle). Empty hydration backpacks are also allowed. (Electrolyte packets for hydration are too.)
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Also, I’m told that Electrolit will be back on site with a hydration station near the main stage and handing out free cups of the electrolyte-filled drink.
What should be on my Coachella packing list?
I mentioned the bandanna/mask, fan and power bank and charging cable above. I also don’t go to Coachella without earplugs, hand sanitizer, some baby wipes, sunscreen (non-aerosol only) and a hat because the Indio sun is no joke, sunglasses and a couple of Band-Aids just in case. I’ll throw a hooded sweatshirt in my backpack, too, especially if it’s going to be windy.
Even when I’m not working and I go to a festival as a civilian, I’m all about function over fashion and comfortable shoes and socks to walk thousands of steps each day. For Coachella’s walking, I’ll also bring out some gel insoles.
Oh, and leave your cash at home. Everything is cashless at Coachella now.
Definitely download the app before you get there. In addition to being able to set your schedule, it’s become increasingly harder to get the physical map and info booklets on site.
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Pro tip: If you want a poster as a souvenir, something smart I saw last year was someone who brought in their own cardboard poster tube and according to the Coachella FAQ, they are allowed.
What’s the deal with food at Coachella?
Let’s be real. You’re captive at the festival and you can’t bring food in with you. Food is not cheap, but it’s often very good. You can find some reasonably priced options throughout the fest (pizza, especially), but plan on spending about $18-$25 for most entrees on-site. There are plenty of vegetarian and vegan options available, too.
Some of the vendors we sampled last year, including Sandoitchi and Farmhouse Kitchen Thai Cuisine, are back at Indio Central Market. And Gerard’s Paella and Mano Po are among those returning.
You can also go for the super luxe Nobu pop-up, back at the Red Bull Mirage again this year, or have a fancy family-style meal with Outstanding in the Field with famous chefs.
Here’s a look at some other food options at Coachella in 2026.
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Reader Stacey from Rancho Santa Margarita, who has only missed two Coachellas since the beginning, also offered a great tip: Eat your meals off schedule to avoid long food lines.
You can also score some free snacks and things at various brand activations, like last year’s Takis spot.
If you have more time to dine, Times critic Bill Addison recently updated his Palm Springs dining guide.
My go-to move if I’m not stuck in the parking lot late at night is In-N-Out (there are now two locations in Indio and another one just west on Highway 111 in La Quinta).
What’s new at Coachella this year?
We’ll know more once we get the set times and map and will update here accordingly, but there is the mysterious line on the bottom of the lineup poster that reads: “The Bunker debut of Radiohead Kid A Mnesia.”
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I always see pictures of famous people at the Coachella parties. How can I get into the Coachella parties? Are there other shows outside of the festival? Can you get me in?
You know how around the Super Bowl everyone talks about “the big game” because they can’t mention it by name but you know exactly what they’re referring to? The vast majority of the events happening in the desert in April aren’t technically affiliated with Coachella but they exist because everyone’s in town for the festival. Coachella = “desert music festival.”
Many of the parties you see with the most famous people are invite-only, like Neon Carnival and Camp Poosh and Nylon House, but there are lots of activations and shows where you don’t even need a Coachella wristband to attend.
Goldenvoice Surf Club takes over the Palm Springs Surf Club both weekends. Passes start at $49 for a single day and $85 for two days. Parking on site is an additional $20. You need to be at least 18 to attend. See the lineup and more details at gvsurfclub.com.
If you want to keep the music going all night, Framework in the Desert is back for a fifth year of afterparty performances April 10-12. Notable artists include a DJ set from Disclosure, Boys Noize and Armin Van Buuren. You need to be at least 21 to attend. Single-day passes start at $74 and $85 depending on the day and three-day passes start at $194. Find more details at thisisframework.com.
Check back for more updates on parties and events open to the public.
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That all sounds like a lot. How can you watch Coachella from home?
If you want to celebrate Couch-ella, the festival has partnered with YouTube for years to stream the festival live. There are usually six channels you can watch within the YouTube channel, each dedicated to a stage. Not every performance is streamed live, but the vast majority are.
The stream starts a few hours after things are underway in Indio and not all set times line up with reality, so it’s not unusual to see people who are there posting on social about something that hasn’t necessarily happened on the stream yet.
Set times for the stream typically drop immediately before the festival. After the music is done for the night, the stream repeats until the next day’s broadcast begins.
One thing to note is in previous years the more rock and punk-based Sonora Tent streams Weekend 1 and it’s replaced by the house-centric Yuma Tent for Weekend 2.
There’s also the option of Coachella’s livestream app.
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Pro tip: If you’re watching on YouTube, take advantage of one of the multiview options to flip between stages without having to sit through as many commercials.
Have questions you don’t see answered here? Ask our experts!
A still from ‘Enola Holmes 3’
| Photo Credit: Netflix
Enola Holmes 3sees Philip Barantini (Adolescence) take over direction from Fleabag’s Harry Bradbeer while Jack Thorne (another Adolescence alum) continues as writer from the first two films. The supposed darker take is not very apparent in this tale featuring the consultant detective’s sister.
Based on Nancy Springer’s charming The Enola Holmes Mysteries, Enola Holmes 3 opens with a wedding in Malta. Enola (Millie Bobby Brown), the younger sister of Sherlock (Henry Cavill), and a detective in her own right, as we have seen from the earlier films, is getting married to sweet, idealistic Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge).
Sherlock is in Malta for the wedding which he strongly disapproves, believing Enola will not be able to pursue her career as a detective once she marries and becomes Lady Tewkesbury. Enola has her own doubts about the marriage — not about Tewkesbury but about his world, the people in it and their expectations.
Enola Holmes 3 (English)
Director: Philip Barantini
Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Louis Partridge, Himesh Patel, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Susan Wokoma
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Runtime: 105 minutes
Storyline: As Enola prepares to marry Lord Tewkesbury in Malta, her brother goes missing and the game is afoot
When she finally gets into the carriage for her wedding, she realises she is being followed by a masked rider. After a thrilling chase involving the dropping of many bridal veils, the pursuer is revealed to be Dr Watson (Himesh Patel), Sherlock’s flatmate, friend and chronicler (not yet, though). The mask, the good doctor explains, is for allergies.
He was thundering after Enola because Sherlock has vanished, probably kidnapped, as he was working on another case. When Enola’s future mother-in-law, Lady Tewkesbury (Hattie Morahan) also goes missing, the wedding is forgotten as Enola races against time to solve the mystery.
A still from ‘Enola Holmes 3’
| Photo Credit:
Netflix
The pieces of the puzzle include the Battle of Khost in Afghanistan, looted gold, the Maltese fight for independence in the person of Mikiel Mizzi (Joe Azzopardi) from the Partito Anti-Riformista, and the criminal mastermind Moriarty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster).
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Enola’s mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) and her friend Edith (Susan Wokoma) are skulking around giving Enola invisible support as Eudoria is in trouble with the law for her dynamite-forward ways.
Enola Holmes 3 zips by in a series of frantic action sequences, quips and callbacks. The storybook look is propped up by those amazing pop-ups. Darker themes arrive in lines such as Moriarty saying “There are few British names that are not tarnished with the pain of its empire.”
Brown has created an endearing heroine in her Enola, even if her habit of breaking the fourth wall, while definitely reduced, has gone way beyond twee to be outright annoying. Cavill’s Sherlock is brave and beautiful and just that little bit cross, while Carter’s Eudoria walks the line between gently eccentric and decidedly odd as she dispenses gems of wisdom including “the puzzle is always as devious as the setter.”
Fast, fun and eminently forgettable, this is popcorn entertainment at its most efficient.
A century and a half ago, Richard Wagner was running out of cash as he was preparing to stage his four momentous nights of opera known as the “Ring Cycle” when he got a message from the Women’s Centennial Executive Committee in Philadelphia. It offered him a princely $5,000 (around $150,000 today) to write a triumphant 12-minute orchestral score to open the Centennial Exposition in Fairmont Park celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
On May 10, 1876, Theodore Thomas, perhaps America’s most famous conductor at the time (he would go on to head the New York Philharmonic and help found the Chicago Symphony), led the premiere of Wagner’s “Grosse Festmarsch” with a 150-member orchestra, its brass and percussion so impressive that the addition of cannon fire Wagner suggested was not needed. The crowd was said to number well over 100,000. President Ulysses S. Grant attended and invited Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil to join him along with members of Congress and Supreme Court justices for what remains a unique Declaration of Independence spectacle and debacle.
The “Centennial March,” as it came to be known, turned out to be dreck. Even Wagner, who carelessly tossed it off in a couple of weeks, said the best thing about the score was the fee, which he had demanded to be paid in gold. But what sounds like something AI might come up with if asked to write a pompous march in the style of Wagner began the American obsession with celebrating the Declaration of Independence, the words and deeds of our presidents, our very democracy with the assist of the symphony orchestra and opera.
One hundred years later, the country was awash with federal, state, city and philanthropic funding for a music-happy bicentennial of exceptional ambition. “With millions available in hand and more money to come,” Time Magazine wrote in 1975, “the Bicentennial is the biggest bonanza for the American composer since Hollywood discovered the musical.”
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And so it was. The centerpiece was the National Endowment for the Arts Bicentennial Orchestra Commissioning Project. That funded America’s six top orchestras to each commission a major work that all six would play. In addition, the NEA offered further support to 34 American orchestras for dozens more new scores.
Everyone got into the act. The New York State Council of the Arts alone sponsored 68 commissions. Orchestras everywhere came up with striking projects. The Pittsburgh Symphony, for instance, premiered L.A. composer John LaMontaine’s opera/oratorio “Be Glad Then America” that featured the folk singer Odetta as the Muse of Liberty and enlisted ROTC students to reenact the Battle of Lexington overhead the orchestra.
The National Symphony commissioned symphonies from Roy Harris and William Schuman as well as Alan Hovhaness’ “Ode to Freedom,” a lovely short violin concerto written for Yehudi Menuhin. The list goes on.
We are obviously not seeing or hearing much like that in a semiquincentennial year when our government’s green gets the most attention for promoting algae. Even so, the NEA does indeed have an “America250” project (though it does little to publicize it, let alone fund it on the scale of 50 years ago) that is promoting more than 50 artworks. In music, they range from the Montgomery Symphony’s premiere in February of Nkeiru Okoye’s oratorio “A Time for Jubilee,” commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches, to a New West Symphony premiere last weekend of Michael Christie’s “A Ronald Reagan Portrait” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
The major East Coast orchestras are paying some attention. The New York Philharmonic premiered David Lang’s luminous “the wealth of nations.” The National Symphony got the most attention in its attempt to commission Philip Glass’ “Lincoln” Symphony, which the composer pulled in opposition to an un-Lincoln-like presidential takeover of the Kennedy Center. Glass then gave the rights to the Boston Symphony for a July 5 first performance.
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The National Symphony did pull off the premiere of Peter Boyer’s “American Mosaic,” and it was to the Altadena composer that Philadelphia, this time around, entrusted its Declaration of Independence commemoration. Boyer’s multimedia oratorio, “A Hundred Years On,” was given its premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra last month at the orchestra’s outdoor summer home, the Mann Center.
Upcoming will be a few repeat performances. Next month, “the wealth of nations” lands at the Aspen Festival, as does the “Lincoln” Symphony at the Cabrillo festival (with an L.A. Phil performance next season). “American Mosaic,” of which the Pacific Symphony was a co-commissioner, had its West Coast premiere in Costa Mesa last month and was scheduled to be performed at the Hollywood Bowl by the National Symphony in August, but that has now been replaced by Dvorak’s commonplace “New World Symphony.”
None of this comes close to comparing with the attempted civic zest of 1976. The NEA made it a matter of admirable policy that commissioned new works get multiple performances. Yet despite several of these being substantial works by some of our most noted and venturesome composers, few bicentennial commissions have survived. Even odder is that many of the composers did not necessarily feel compelled to explore nationalist themes. For them, American liberty implied freedom to simply write the kind of music they cared about.
The six works for the six orchestras were David del Tredici’s irresistibly over-the-top “Final Alice” (Chicago Symphony), Elliott Carter’s arrestingly impenetrable-on-first-hearing “Symphony for Three Orchestras” (New York Philharmonic), John Cage’s irrepressibly come-what-may “Renga” (Boston Symphony), Morton Subotnick’s brilliant electronic-landscaped “Before the Butterfly” (Los Angeles Philharmonic), Leslie Bassett’s introspective “Echoes From an Invisible World” and Jacob Druckman’s abstract-modernist “Chiaroscuro” (Cleveland Orchestra).
No orchestra has brought back its commission over the last half century, and only Chicago and New York recorded their commissions. No recording at all exists of L.A.’s, although Subotnick’s inventive uses of electronic music with a standard symphony orchestra went on to have considerable influence. None of these works, it appears, are likely to be heard anywhere in America this year, with one sort-of exception.
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An explanation for that may be that, while 1976 was a fraught time for America — the country was recovering from the Vietnam War, we had a president and vice president who were not elected, there was runaway inflation, etc. — the music of the time represented optimism. Many works around the country explored new electronic music technology. It was the year Glass wrote “Einstein on the Beach” and Steve Reich created “Music for 18 Musicians” — the composers’ first masterpieces — demonstrating that Minimalism mattered.
That sense of liberation is clearly behind Del Tredici’s “Final Alice,” an hourlong romp around the ending of “Alice in Wonderland” for superhuman soprano and orchestra. It is so obsessively and addictively wild that its tamest moments sound like Richard Strauss on LSD. It does have a cult following although performances are few and far between.
Cage’s score is an abstract work based on the Japanese form of collective poetry known as renga, in which each poet attempts to write a line that is as distant as possible in meaning from the preceding line. Cage translates that to an independence of instrumental parts. While “Renga” can be performed alone Cage further suggests it be played along with an actual bicentennial work he wrote separately, “Apartment House 1776.” That is what Boston and the other orchestras did.
Indeed, “Apartment House” got the lion’s share of bicentennial attention and ridicule. When Zubin Mehta conducted it at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the L.A. Philharmonic did not take it seriously and many walked out on it.
The work features four vocal soloists who represent Native American, Sephardic, African American and Protestant religious traditions, along with instrumental music based on early American hymn tunes. Everything is cut up and put together through chance operations into what Cage called a Musicircus. Under the circumstances “Renga” was hardly noticed, although two decades later, “Renga” came into its own when Michael Tilson Thomas famously conducted it with the San Francisco Symphony and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead.
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Still the idea that “Apartment House” need not stand alone, that our traditions and those of long-ago Japan belong together, represented for Cage a future for America. We need not act like a superpower, he noted, but merely be one nation, no more and no less, among many.
We are obviously not that nation. A half-century later, “Apartment House” tends to exist mainly in its own right. An excellent London new music ensemble calls itself Apartment House. Detroit Opera recently staged it with a 2026 need to give the singers the opportunity to select their own music rather than reflect on our heritage. If American music in 1976 represented a collective, inquisitive, inventive American spirit of discovery, the semiquincentennial in the age of social media has become more about the individual identity.
As a sign of how we think about ourselves, the Los Angeles Philharmonic begins its Hollywood Bowl season five days after the 4th with a program of American music conducted by Thomas Wilkins that opens with Valery Coleman’s “Fanfare for Uncommon Times,” which was written five years ago.
But for now, the work that stands out is Lang’s “the wealth of nations.” It balances harsh thoughts of how the promise of capitalism has failed society and how racism remains with music of stunning beauty and glory, to gently but forcefully show us, in our age of American dissatisfaction, the direction in which we might go to make us proud again. It needs many performances.
In Sender, writer-director Russell Goldman’s high-anxiety debut, the filmmaker expands on his 2022 short Return to Sender, in which Allison Tolman starred as a woman who receives packages she didn’t order. That may not sound like a premise that would result in a paranoid, darkly comedic thriller, much less a feature. But in extending his story from 18 minutes to just over 90, Goldman follows a maddening scenario involving an online retailer called Smirk, a fictionalized Amazon counterpart. More significantly, he captures the frenzied mindset of his protagonist, who grapples with staying sober and several other major life changes—all compounded by a layer of justifiable paranoia brought on by the endless packages. Goldman’s tweaky style and elusive scripting create a peculiar, out-of-whack presentation that destabilizes the viewer, firmly placing us in his main character’s perspective. However, by the end, the journey through this cine-manic headspace doesn’t add up to much, and the potential character study at the center feels somewhat lost in the mechanics of the conspiracy.
Britt Lower (AppleTV’s Severance)stars as Julia, who has just lost her job and moved into a rental home to get her life on track. She is backed financially by her overbearing sister Tatiana (Anna Baryshnikov), who occasionally comes nosing around to verify that Julia doesn’t backslide. And she doesn’t. Julia attends regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where she meets the steely Whitney (Rhea Seehorn), who isn’t interested in being her sponsor. But at home, Julia receives a Smirk package with her brand of lipstick. The problem? She didn’t order it. She calls customer service, and the representative doesn’t help much before telling her, “Be sure to stay alert and aware.” Wait, what? Sender is loaded with nagging, unplaceable details like this. They’re often amusing, intriguing, and exasperating in the same moment. But these pieces don’t complete a whole picture, at least not a narratively satisfying one.
The Smirk packages, delivered by the outwardly helpful, nice-guy driver Charlie (David Dastmalchian), contain a random assortment of objects, from drum kits to protein powder. The squirrelly Julia, already coming apart at the seams from her recent drama, doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s convinced there’s some plot against her, perhaps by someone at Smirk. To what end, she doesn’t know. But Goldman gives us a glimpse of the long-term consequences of her ordeal in the prologue, which features Jamie Lee Curtis (also a producer) as Lisa, a woman in circumstances similar to Julia’s. Lisa’s response to receiving a box of soil with a broken shin pad (with “Can’t Can’t Can” scrawled on it) entails an attempt to suffocate herself with the bubble wrap, only to do far worse with a sharp edge of the shin pad. To show Lisa’s fate, Goldman’s imagery becomes twisted and surreal but also cryptic.
Sender’s disorienting mood is matched by a skewed formal presentation. Cinematographer Gemma Doll-Grossman’s wide-angle lenses and arch angles might feel at home in a Ken Russell or Terry Gilliam feature such as The Devils(1971) or 12 Monkeys (1996). Julia’s half-remembered drinking binges, accented by blurry close-ups, suggest she may have slept with any number of coworkers. She can’t remember, and it embarrasses her. Her rental is dressed in simple if shabby décor, which gives way to Julia’s erratic collage-like overhaul. Melisa Myers’ stuffed production design makes the most of heightened colors and banal, cluttered rooms that lend a normality to the bizarre, ever more disturbing predicament. Nathan Ruyle’s erratic music delivers what must be described as a soundscape rather than a traditional score, with collusive sound effects and tones driving our certainty that Julia is onto something. Along with Marco Rosas’ discordant editing, Goldman’s technical approach effectively reflects Julia’s fragmented, sleep-deprived mind. But his work as a writer hasn’t done enough to justify this level of technique.
After Julia makes a revelatory discovery that small cameras have been embedded in the products from those mysterious packages, the eventual explanation about what has been happening and why strains logic and underwhelms. It also raises even more unanswered questions. Although well-made and acted—Lower and Seehorn should be on track to movie stardom—Goldman’s script could have used another draft to better work through what unfolds. Sender doesn’t give us enough of its characters’ inner lives beyond the situation at hand, so Julia, Charlie, Tatiana, and Whitney feel like devices in a scenario rather than well-drawn human beings. Even so, Goldman fills his film with deeply broken people who try to gain control of their lives by controlling others, exposing and preying on their weaknesses. Despite the material’s potential resonance, Goldman’s style is overpowering. Still, his kernel of an idea and the way he explores it demonstrate his clear skill, and for much of Sender, its sheer oddball energy earns admiration.
