The war movie genre benefits overall from films that show the impacts of foreign conflicts back home. This is one of those films, but unfortunately, it’s not one of the category’s best.
“My Dead Friend Zoe” centers on U.S. Army veteran Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), who’s back home in the United States after serving in Afghanistan. Lately, life has been hard for her, as she’s run into some trouble with the law, and forced to attend group therapy sessions because of trauma, though she can’t bring herself to speak about her experiences.
That trauma revolves around her friend Zoe, who passed away. However, she still sees Zoe often as a ghost who she speaks with regularly. Her life only gets more complicated when she is asked to take care of her estranged grandfather who has early Alzheimer’s.
“My Dead Friend Zoe” is one of those films a cinethusiast wants to enjoy. It has a solid idea, a good cast and a respectable goal of digging into an important subject. In this case, the challenges U.S. veterans face when getting back home. Unfortunately, this film from director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, which he co-wrote with A.J. Bermudez, disappoints.
The biggest, glaring problem of the flick is how it handles its core concept. If a film wants to include the paranormal, it should go all the way with it. If it’s not fully committed to, it can fall apart. That’s basically what happens here. See, the rules around Zoe being a ghost who hangs out with Merit isn’t very well established.
This could have been a really interesting exploration. What would it be like for a veteran to spend regular periods of time with the ghost of their dead sister in arms. How would that friend feel about being a ghost and only being visible to one person. It could make for a fascinating journey for each character.
What we get instead is much less intriguing. A big issue is the more the film goes on, it becomes less clear whether Zoe is actually there as a ghost, just a representation of Merit’s trauma, or her imagining what Zoe would say in these situations.
Sometimes Merit has full on conversations with Zoe, while others it seems like the friend is just background noise in the protagonist’s head as other events take place. As a result, much of this part of the movie, which keep in mind, is the emotional core, feels oddly executed and takes a viewer out of the experience.
It also doesn’t help that Zoe is largely one-note throughout much of the picture. She almost entirely just makes sarcastic or snarky comments. It’s understandable that Hausmann-Stokes wanted the comedy portion to show up with her and to be a contrast to what Merit is feeling. But it just feels overly done.
The uneven execution of Merit’s experience with Zoe also detracts from the other plot threads at play, which includes a fairly basic story of reconnecting with a grouchy elderly family member and a severely under-developed attempt at some light romantic interest.
It’s too bad because the messy plotting and poor handling of the Zoe situation ends up wasting the efforts of a dedicated cast. Martin-Green, and Natalie Morales, who plays Zoe, deserve some credit for the emotional moments. Plus, the film features the likes of Oscar winner Morgan Freeman and Academy Award nominee Ed Harris, who are both good like usual.
Plus, filmmaking wise, the movie is fairly well put together. This is Hausmann-Stokes’ first theatrical feature, but it’s finely made for an indie. The editing is solid, too, incorporating flashbacks quite well.
Unfortunately, the movie has a lot working against it still because of its overall handling of its central idea. Maybe if it had committed fully to that, or on the flip side was a film just about a veteran reconnecting with her grandpa while dealing with trauma while having a romance on the side, it could have worked. Something like that was done with some success in 2022’s “Causeway” with Jennifer Lawrence.
But trying to do both, and not even having a fully conceptualized manner of portraying one of the main plot beats, causes the flick to stumble. Not to mention a twist that pushed the movie into melodrama. It’s slightly salvaged overall, though, thanks to above average acting, some good emotional moments and a good message about veteran mental health. 2.5 out of 5.
Matthew Liedke on Film 
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