Kyle Hausmann-Stokes enlisted in the army shortly after 9/11 and spent five years in Iraq as a paratrooper. He’s spent the time since his military experience working on furthering veterans’ lives by spreading awareness about their issues through commercial work. Nearly twenty years later, he’s shifted his focus to the narrative filmmaking world, creating My Dead Friend Zoe, a sweetly funny film about post-military life.

My Dead Friend Zoe Review

Hausmann-Stokes first feature stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Merit, a young woman whose experience back at home is rocked by a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder. As the title suggests, her dead friend, Zoe (No Hard Feelings‘s Natalie Morales), plays an integral part as her imaginary friend — a familiar coping device in dramedies like this. As she navigates her life through the VA, her dying grandfather, and a new relationship, she learns to persevere.

It’s a pretty funny script with a good dramatic balance, too. It falls into the familiar trappings of other dramedies about grief. Hausmann-Stokes’s script stands out from the crowd, but it’s a little stale at moments and probably could’ve been ten minutes shorter. If you’re looking for an original concept, you won’t find it here. Like any other film, what makes this film is the perspective of who’s telling it.

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Martin-Green is an excellent leading woman. She’s funny and sweet, nicely portraying her character’s grief in an understandable and relatable way. Morales is given a little less to do than you would expect from the title. More minor roles from Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris are both great, although Freeman’s appearance feels more like a glorified cameo than a meaningful appearance on his own.

Utkarsh Ambudkar shows up as the love interest for Merit, but his character, like Zoe, feels like an afterthought. Although the film should revolve entirely around Merit, almost every individual storyline feels a little half-baked. The emotional downturn this takes as Merit’s problems are at their worst feels unearned and a little silly.

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Then, as the film reaches its second emotional climax, it finally all feels earned. After so much time feeling like we’ve been put behind a barrier, Hausmann-Stokes finally breaks it down and allows us to fully understand Merit through her struggles.

My Dead Friend Zoe

Photos by Michael Moriatis

One of the problems this has is that it spends so much time leaving us feeling a little unconnected with Merit as she processes her trauma. This frustration, though, is essential to face. It makes the conclusion feel much more emotionally earned as a whole.

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That’s the thing about PTSD, though. It’s hard for most moviegoers to fully relate to the struggles of soldiers at war. Film critics like myself are so often shielded from things like war and instead use film as the method to understand the struggles of these people. Hausmann-Stokes uses his expertise and personal experience to showcase this issue in a way that is understandable.

Is My Dead Friend Zoe worth watching?

The score is one of the technical qualities that makes this a worthwhile watch. Dan Romer’s composition is a beautifully wistful and moving film element that makes it much easier to watch. Music in film is often so underrated, and in this film, it’s used at the perfect moments to draw you in and slowly push you out of a scene. In particular, the score helps during the climax, making it feel like even more of a punch in the gut.

Even though it gets a little lost at moments and struggles to connect us to the emotional core until the ending, My Dead Friend Zoe works as a grief comedy. It has enough laughs to work on its own but keeps you pulled in with the emotional story of a woman dealing with her grief. You’ve seen this type of film before, and if you enjoy this subgenre of dramedy, you’ll certainly like this.

My Dead Friend Zoe is in theaters nationwide on February 28.
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