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Allis was a mother, wife, and frustrated feminist who lived a problematical life of anxiety and depression. When she died in 2001, her children found 300 pages of transcripts, 50 hours of audio recordings, and 200 home movies in the backyard shed with explicit instructions to peruse after her passing. With a fractured family scattered to the four winds, grandson Morgan Dews took over the task of research, finding an entire existence he knew nothing about, documented with alarming precision that revealed deep psychological wounds disregarded long ago.

“Must Read After My Death” isn’t a traditional talking heads documentary on a splintered household, it’s more of a piece of performance art, using Allis’s collection of media as the tour guide through the rummage of her life. Employing audio and visual cues from the unearthed collection of memories, the film assumes an almost surreal quality, inching it away from “Capturing the Friedmans” comparisons to become something distinctive in its conviction and tireless in its curiosity. Within seconds of the film’s opening, “Must Read” sucks the viewer into this alien world, finding unnerving comfort in the distortion of a dysfunctional family and their heartbreaking downward spiral into ruin.

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