Mouse

Kenny Riches · 2025 · 105 minutes
Nov. 8 · Regal 2 · 7:30 p.m.

A petty thief living with his mother, signs up for a penpal service in hopes of finding a friend, or maybe more. Unfortunately, his penpal has other plans.

Programer’s Note

Denny, a first-generation immigrant living with his mother in Salt Lake City, has a bit of an antisocial streak, to put it mildly. Clean-cut and soft-spoken, he bounces regularly from job to job, discovering at each stop new tricks for skimming money from the register. Or, more often, he just straight-up steals, strolling through quiet neighborhoods at night in search of unlocked cars and unattended bikes. He’s shameless about it, and that antisocial streak extends to his personal life as well. Denny is bored, friendless, and lonely, which is what leads him to contact a shady penpal service he spots in the classifieds. (Mouse is set in 2007, the dying days of classifieds.) Denny doesn’t know it’s a shady service, of course. That discovery comes only later, after he’s developed feelings for the con artist on the other end of the mailbox and all hell breaks loose.

Mouse is the fourth feature film written and directed by Kenny Riches, who also stars here as Denny, alongside his mother, Hiroko. That the idea for the film first occurred to Riches during the pandemic makes sense, as all of the characters seem estranged from community and healthier social bonds that might otherwise help them resist their worst instincts. For Riches, Denny’s sickness is a byproduct of a diseased system. “What’s left is a dog-eat-dog mentality that is woven deeply into the fabric of America,” he’s said about the film. “It’s easy to find oneself feeling alone even in a sea of 300 million people.”

Rest assured Mouse is no socio-economic treatise! Indeed, it’s the rare, small-budget thriller that pulls off every genre convention. Slick and stylish, in the best senses of the words, and packed with fun twists, Mouse is delightfully satisfying. Special mention goes to Sarah Coffey as Tess, a femme fatale in the classic mold.

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Japan-born, Utah-raised, Kenny Riches currently resides in Miami, Florida. He has premiered films at Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca, Miami International, Cinequest Film Festival and Slamdance. Mouse marks his fourth feature film as writer/director. He has received generous support from the Sundance Institute, Sun Valley Film Lab, US in Progress, the Knight Foundation, and PBS. He is a co-founder of The Davey Foundation, a grant-giving organization for filmmakers, and is a partner in the production company, Dualist.

Jesse Brown is a producer known for his work on both short and feature-length films. He has produced four feature films, including three collaborations with director Kenny Riches, beginning with The Strongest Man (Sundance 2015). He produced My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (Tribeca 2020) and most recently served as a producer on Mouse, winning best narrative feature film as well as the grand jury award at the 2025 Brooklyn Film Festival.