Film Review: "My Dead Friend Zoe"
Kyle Hausmann-Stokes' directorial debut features dynamite performances and a story that's deeply resonant and socially vital.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.
I’m always on the hunt for a film that manages to be both remarkably poignant and also a reasonable length. If the same film also manages to be quite funny, then I’m absolutely sold. Given the trailers that I’d seen for My Dead Friend Zoe, I thought that this film might just fit the bill and, having seen it, I can safely say that it’s definitely one of my favorite films of 2024. It’s one of those movies that manages to be both the perfect blend of comedy and drama while also offering an important message about the importance of mental health and the scourge of survivor’s guilt and PTSD among those who have served in the military.
When the film begins Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan struggling to both reintegrate to civilian life and to cope with the fact that her best friend, Zoe (Natalie Morales) has died (though the exact circumstances of the death remain unclear for most of the film). Morgan Freeman’s Dr. Cole runs a support group, but it’s clear that Merit only attends against her will. Adding to her stresses is the fact that her grandfather, Dale (played by Ed Harris, who has really made a career out of playing crotchety old men) has begun to show alarming signs of advancing Alzheimer’s, leading her mother, Kris (Gloria Reuben) to call upon Merit to stay with him and prepare for the moment when he’ll have to move into an assisted living facility.
This is the kind of film that works based primarily on the performances of its two main cast members. Sonequa Martin-Green is truly a revelation in her role as Merit. Martin-Green is adept at moving through different emotional registers depending on the needs of the moment, and she has crackling chemistry with Natalie Morales. Watching them share scenes, one can truly believe that these are two friends making the best out of the difficulties of the war in Afghanistan–everything from a broken iPod to the perils of sniper fire–and civilian life. Morales’ Zoe is capable of delivering some truly hilarious lines, and these help to leaven the heavier, more poignant moments, many of which require heavy lifting from Martin-Green.
Of course, Harris and Reuben are powerful in their own right. Harris has spent the last several years really honing his skills playing aging men struggling with the perils of aging, and he is perfectly cast as Dale, a man who grapples with both Alzheimer’s and also his own experiences as a Vietnam vet. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, he remarks that, unlike Merit’s generation, the men of Vietnam were never given a real chance to explore, let alone talk about, their experiences with mental health professionals, preferring instead to swap stories down at the VFW. He’s right, up to a point. It is true that the veterans of the Vietnam War were treated shamefully by both their own government and the civilians who scorned them upon their return. Merit, too, deserves better, and it takes much of the film for her to realize this about herself.
Also worth noting is the fact that the members of the support group that Merit attends, including Morgan Freeman, are themselves veterans. As with 2024’s Sing Sing, which featured real members of the Rehabilitation Though their scenes are brief, there’s a remarkable amount of emotion in their delivery, as they all speak openly and honestly about both their service–including the comrades they lost–and their struggles to readjust to life as civilians. It’s precisely the emotional honesty required of all of those attending the support group that causes Merit so much trouble, particularly since Zoe’s shade is quite resistant to the idea.
It’s clear early on that Zoe is dead and that she is nothing more than a projection of Merit’s guilt, both at having survived their time in Afghanistan and at Zoe’s death, for which she blames herself. Like so many others who have come back from war while others did not, Merit can never quite forgive herself for still being alive. Thanks to Martin-Green’s textured and nuanced performance, we feel her pain and her guilt, particularly once the twist reveals hat Zoe didn’t die at the hands of a sniper while serving in Afghanistan but, instead, took her own life once she returned to the States (at Merit’s insistence) and felt adrift as her friend moved on without her, falling deeper and deeper into alcohol-fueled despair. This is a remarkably effective twist, landing like a gut punch for an audience primed by the film’s narrative to believe that she never even made it home in the first place. Once the truth is revealed Merit’s guilt makes even more sense, though My Dead Friend Zoe repeatedly reminds us that she is in no way to blame for her friend’s suicide.
Letting go of Zoe’s spectral presence, therefore, would mean releasing all of the guilt and anguish that Merit has been carrying around with her. Even more importantly, perhaps, it would also mean letting go of the only thing of Zoe that she has left. Though her memories of her dead friend are, of course, inextricably intertwined with trauma, they are still meaningful. At the same time, as the film points out again and again, the trauma is only part of the problem. To add insult to injury, Zoe’s presence–biting and funny and irreverent as it is–is also keeping Merit from even beginning to move into a healthier future. During her visit with her grandfather, for example, Merit ends up going on a date with Alex, played by the ever-charming and funny Utkarsh Ambudkar, only for the whole thing to go awry thanks to Zoe’s intrusion. Zoe is also the reason that she can’t and won’t commit to fulfilling her treatment with the support group.
Despite the fact that doing so is obviously in her own best interest, the moment in which Merit finally exorcises Zoe is bittersweet, both for her and for the audience. After all, those of us who have been watching the film have almost come to see this Zoe as the same one as the one that Merit knew while they were serving in Afghanistan, even though rationally we know this isn’t the case. And, as someone who tends to hold onto every emotion and memory as if it’s a piece of precious gold–in the hopes that doing so will somehow keep the past alive rather than embalming it and keeping me from living in the present–I can understand why Merit would be so hesitant, so reluctant, really, to let go of this last piece of her friend, illusory as it me actually be.
Not every film with an important social message is going to succeed, and far too many of them end up skewing too much in the direction of sending a message and less on getting us invested in the characters and their struggles. My Dead Friend Zoe, however is, as Peter Debruge noted, “smart and sincere by never sanctimonious.” There’s also a lot of truth to his comparison of director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes to Frank Capra, since both directors have a keen understanding of American cinema and its ability to grapple with thorny moral and social questions while also telling a damn good and quite moving story.
As so often of late, I also found myself identifying with this film. In addition to having friends who have served in the military, my best friend struggles with some pretty significant mental health issues, and I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve grappled with the fear that one day I would get the call telling me that he’d taken his own life. Anyone who has ever ignored a phone call or missed a lunch date with a friend only to have said friend die unexpectedly knows this can create a weight that settles on your shoulders. My Dead Friend Zoe is, thus, a powerful and potent reminder to cherish your friends and to reach out to them but also, at the same time, to accept that there are quite simply some things that you cannot change. Sometimes, you just have to move into the future.