MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE - Mark Reviews Movies

My Dead Friend Zoe, Briarcliff Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 27, 2025

For as much unspoken pain and regret as there is in My Dead Friend Zoe, co-writer/director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes' film never feels hopeless. Both qualities come from the story's main character, a U.S. Army veteran dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder following the death of her friend. The grief and guilt belong to her, as well as a few other characters in this story, but so, too, does the desire to help others who need it. Watching the film, we become invested in the possibility that Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) might finally learn to help herself and accept that others want to do the same for her.

Considering the severity of the subject matter, it is a surprise how warm, tender, and humorous Hausmann-Stokes' debut feature can be. To be sure, the screenplay by the director and A.J. Bermudez, inspired by the former's own time in and colleagues within the military, cuts right to both the gimmick and the trauma of its story, but it never allows itself to play games with the former or wallow in the latter.

Merit's attitude has a lot to do with that approach. We first meet her serving as a mechanic in Afghanistan, relegated to glorified guard duty at an out-of-the-way outpost. She and Zoe (Natalie Morales), who appears to be Merit's only real friend overseas, spend their time listening to music, singing along, and talking about their post-military plans. Merit wants to go to college, but Zoe doesn't see many options or opportunities after her tour of duty is complete.

After that brief introduction, the film arrives in its present day, as Merit is present for a group therapy session, ordered by a judge after a work-related incident and led by Dr. Cole (Morgan Freeman). It would be erroneous to say that Merit participates in the group, because she doesn't say anything about herself and is often distracted whenever other veterans at the sessions are speaking.

That's because Merit is too busy listening to Zoe, who makes sarcastic comments and is impatient for the session to end. As the title lets us know, Zoe isn't actually there. She's only in Merit's head, because, at some point before this and after the prologue, Zoe died. Whatever happened to her friend, Merit refuses to even acknowledge Zoe's existence, either as a real person from her past or as a figment of her guilt-stricken imagination. She definitely won't say why Zoe is dead, and while that's the central mystery of the plot, there is much more going on here than just a series of flashbacks leading us to that revelation.

Indeed, the screenwriters might be attempting too much here, which is simply to say that it works toward confining the inherent honesty of this story into some kind of formula. On one level, that's understandable, because the core ideas of this tale might otherwise be too filled with despair. Besides, Merit is the kind of character who finds assorted reasons and excuses to evade confronting the truth of her past and her feelings, so why not give her some good reasons to do so?

Some of those include a potential romance between Merit and Alex (Utkarsh Ambudkar), who runs a retirement facility in the small town where Merit spent her summers. Those happy days revolved around her grandparents, who owned a house by the lake outside town, and especially her grandfather Dale (Ed Harris), himself an Army vet who served in Vietnam and who encouraged Merit to join the military herself, simply by his example and her pride in him.

Following the death of his wife, Dale is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, and after it becomes clear that Cole is going to keep pushing Merit to actually do the work of therapy before he signs her court order, she decides to leave the city, head out to the lake house, and arrange for Dale's residency at the care facility. Zoe, of course, tags along, because she is, as the dead friend puts it at one point, Merit's "shadow."

There are shadows all over the place here, most of them unstated by the likes of Merit, Dale, Cole, and the faces of those in the counseling group (The end credits show that some of them are real veterans) after our protagonist has abandoned it. Silence and the belief that dealing with trauma in that silence equates strength are the main forces working against Merit, played with conviction by Martin-Green.

Dale shares that belief and, likely, has shown it to his granddaughter by example, as well. While the relationship between Merit and Zoe is at the heart of the mystery and pain of the story, the one that emerges between the granddaughter and grandfather might be just as relevant to film's point about finding help in those who share similar experiences. That connection is more subdued and less showy, obviously, than the eponymous one, but watching these two stubborn characters (Harris is, expectedly, great in the role) clash loudly but bond in quiet recognition of each other says a lot without either character saying much at all.

Some of this still remains stuck in formula (the countdown to group therapy ending and the sweet but undercooked romance), but My Dead Friend Zoe finds more than grief and remorse in its story and characters, as well as some truth in its main gimmick. It becomes a heartfelt plea for understanding—not only for what others experience, but also that, as lonely as the world may seem, people aren't ever really alone.

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