My Dead Friend Zoe ★★1/2

Availability: Showing nationally in theaters. No digital release date at this time. Check JustWatch here for eventual digital release information.

When Merit Met Zoe

If the group therapist in the film is the voice of God—that is, Morgan Freeman—you know you’re in for some serious finger-wagging. “My Dead Friend Zoe” is a preachy, didactic film, to the very end, and beyond. Its final moments, as well as the educational and (yes) fund-raising campaign that accompanies and follows the credits, will cause some to see it as propaganda. It is manipulative. One knows from the title that Zoe is dead or going to die, and from the first scene—of two women soldiers in a Humvee in Afghanistan, with Zoe at the wheel—it’s just a matter of when, and where. Director and writer Kyle Hausmann-Stokes plays the “when” card in a long and misleading scene that has Zoe and her friend Merit (the “My” of the title) seated on the bumper of a military vehicle, guarding the compound, snipers beyond the gate.

Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) left, and Zoe (Natalie Morales)

provide battle-tested support for each other in Afghanistan.

A major subplot, featuring Merit and her cranky Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandfather (Ed Harris, who could play this role in his sleep), is too often unconvincing, cloying, and repetitive, as in the bird-feeder scenes. And the film is dishonest in its presentation of an assisted living facility as blank walls and venetian blinds, and in the fantasy that Merit will be happy and fulfilled as Grandpa’s live-in caretaker.

Zoe (Morales) is dead, but very present, kibitzing from the back seat of the car

with Merit (Martin-Green) at the wheel,

while Merit's Alzheimer's-addled Grandpa (Ed Harris) checks out the playlist.

A second subplot adds humor, with Utkarsh Ambudkar, aka UTK the INC, a rapper and singer, as the owner of “Shady Acres,” the assisted living facility to which Grandpa may be headed. The subplots and comedic lines, including those delivered by delightfully funny Zoe, are welcome, though they are not enough to make the film a comedy, even a black comedy.

Morgan Freeman - the Voice of God - tries to persuade Merit (Martin-Green) to participate in group therapy.

Too much is belabored, as if we didn’t get the point the first time. Merit tells the story of how she came to be in the Army (it involves Grandpa) not once but twice, and that same story is played out—awkwardly, and in highly manipulative fashion—at a July 4 celebration in the town park. Zoe’s backstory (“not everyone has a family to go back to”) is also belabored, as is her jealous reaction to Merit’s acceptance into college, when, as that revealing discussion concludes, the camera shows us stick-figure drawings she’s just made on a porta-potty wall, of a proud Merit, and a distressed Zoe.

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Zoe and Merit are everything that a couple should be: yin and yang, two peas in a pod, kindred spirits, Thelma and Louise, Harry and Sally.

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Belabored, cloying, manipulative, didactic, therapeutic, and with a touch of “On Golden Pond.” Sounds like a candidate for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and it would be, were it not for the extraordinary on-screen chemistry of Merit—and her dead friend, Zoe. From that first scene, the two of them singing along at the top of their lungs to a barely functional iPod, they are everything that a couple should be: yin and yang, two peas in a pod, kindred spirits, Thelma and Louise, Harry and Sally, Tracy and Hepburn, Ani and Ivan in Best Picture “Anora”—joyously in thrall and even in love, though not in any obvious (or cloying) way.

Their friendship transcends difference. Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) is black, upper-middle class, likeable, self-confident, a problem-solver, eager for the future to arrive and change her life. Zoe (Natalie Morales) is Latina, working-class, sardonic, wise-cracking, fearful of what life may hold for her after Afghanistan—and, in death as in life, possessive. Both Martin-Green and Morales bring extensive experience in TV to the big screen, and that experience bears fruit in their captivating portrayals of these two best buds, earning this small, independent film the Audience Award at last year’s South by Southwest festival.

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Despite being dead, Zoe remains in Merit’s life, an embodied ghost-like presence in scene after scene.

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What cannot be transcended is Zoe’s death. Merit is grieving, and somehow deeply troubled. Despite being dead, Zoe remains in Merit’s life, an embodied ghost-like presence in scene after scene, kibitzing in the kitchen or from the back seat, at once droll and earnest. Director Hausmann-Stokes, in this his first feature film (a former paratrooper, he has ample credits with shorts, almost all dealing with veterans’ issues), pulls off the seemingly impossible task of embodying the dead person as alive. Though that “I see dead people” conceit has been done well before—in “Ghost” (1990) and last year's “My Old Ass” —it’s particularly engaging in this film.

Later rather than sooner you’ll learn what happened—how Zoe died—and then you’ll have to decide whether the circumstances of her death make sense of the story you’ve been told and justify its didactic conclusion. Or ruin it.

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He says: Avoid all films with a therapist or encounter group.

She says: The two female leads made it worthwhile for me, maybe a break-out role for Natalie Morales.

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Date: 2025

Director: Kyle Hausmann-Stokes

Starring: Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, Utkarsh Ambudkar, aka UTK the INC

Country: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 103 minutes

Other Awards: 7 wins and 1 other nomination to date