Review: My Dead Friend Zoe — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

My Dead Friend Zoe

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: R

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

Stars: Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris

Co-Writer/Director: Kyle Hausmann-Stokes

 

My Dead Friend Zoe, a strikingly poignant, brilliantly funny, wonderfully acted story of wartime friendship and lingering battlefield trauma, comes out of nowhere, pushes you into your chair, and keeps you riveted with an off-kilter take on issues that the cinema has tackled before, but seldom with such uncommon humanity.

Sonequa Martin-Green (Star Trek: Discovery) plays Merit, an Afghan War veteran who spends long hours every day verbally sparring with her best friend and former comrade-in arms Zoe, played by Grey’s Anatomy semi-regular Natalie Morales. The relationship is fraught: For one thing, Merit is a serious-minded vet struggling to adapt to civilian life while Zoe is an irreverent, wise-cracking free spirit.

Also, Zoe is dead, so only Merit can see and hear her.

And so, we find Merit at a group counseling session mediated by Dr. Cole, a stern but compassionate therapist (Morgan Freeman, whose dulcet tones you’d expect to soothe the most tortured psyche). She’s here by court order after a particularly reckless episode at work, and her mission is simple: Get Dr. Cole to sign off on her participation, so the judge will let her off with a slap on the wrist.

Unfortunately for Merit, Zoe is sitting by her side, unseen by the others the whole time, voicing irreverent exasperation at the proceedings and whispering into Merit’s ear that this is a waste of her time.

Merit clams up. Dr. Cole is not satisfied. He won’t attest to her participation until she actually participates. But Zoe won’t let her.

The film invites us into Merit’s cluttered, bare-bones apartment in Portland, Oregon, where the two women engage in verbal bouts and banter that is in turn funny and festering. Flashbacks take us to their time in the war zone, singing at the top of their lungs as they roll across the rocky landscape in a convoy, deflecting the advances of their male cohorts, sharing their hopes and fears while cleaning latrines and working late-night sentry duty.

In those Afghan passages, we learn Merit is a child of privilege, headed for the college of her choice when this tour is over. Zoe has no family or plans to speak of.  She thinks she’ll just re-enlist — a notion that horrifies Merit, who relentlessly insists her friend has talents and powers that will ensure her success in the outside world.

Now, post-war Merit is a mess and Zoe is dead — albeit ironically good-natured about it. “Look around you,” she says to Merit as they walk through a cemetery. “These are my people!”

Director co/writer Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, making his remarkably accomplished feature film debut, dots the narrative landscape with hints as to what happened to Zoe, most of which we misinterpret until the film’s final minutes. That mystery hums throughout the film, a background noise of muted dread softened by Zoe’s cockeyed humor and relentless energy — no matter what plane she’s existing on.

It comes as some relief to Merit when she is assigned by her mother (Mr. Robot’s Gloria Reuben) to check up on Merit’s maternal grandfather, Dale, who lives alone at an Oregon lake house and shows signs of early onset Alzheimer’s. The old guy — a proud Army veteran — is Merit’s childhood hero, the inspiration for her own decision to enlist in the Army.

Heading to the mountains to be with grandpa is also, conveniently, a way to escape the emotional turmoil of those agonizing therapy sessions.

Ed Harris plays Dale, and as comforting a presence as Morgan Freeman is, Harris offers up Dale as a prickly, ornery cuss who responds to his world getting smaller by lashing out. Dale’s exasperation at Merit as she fails to master his super-complicated trash can routine — six cans for six different kinds of refuse — belies his own sense of order slipping away. Still, the affection shared by the pair prevails, and their interactions are more those of a long-married old couple than a pair separated by generations.

As a bonus, while visiting Dale, Merit runs into a truly sweet-natured local guy named Alex (Utkarsh Ambudkar of TV’s Ghosts). Their attraction is immediate, but when Merit takes a night off from hanging with Zoe to meet Alex at a bar, she finds Zoe lurking in every corner of the place. Zoe, it seems, will not let Merit go. There’s a dark, unspoken element to their life-and-death relationship.

As heavy as the themes of My Dead Friend Zoe may be, there runs a liberating playfulness throughout. It’s a film without villains; only good people gamely trying to work through traumas that are at once universal in scope and unique in detail. Zoe and Merit are genuinely fun to be with — it’s easy to see why their love for each other transcends death. Freeman’s therapist is kind and patient. Dale is cantankerous, but slyly self-aware. And from the moment we meet Alex — self-effacing and sensitive to Merit’s obvious unspoken traumas — we’re rooting for those two to walk off into the Oregon sunset together.

A comedy at heart, My Dead Friend Zoe blesses its characters with a happy ending while acknowledging the traumatized lives — and tragic post-deployment deaths — of too many American veterans. Hausmann-Stokes, an outspoken supporter of veterans’ services, has cast several real-life vets in various roles, and during the closing credits he presents then-and-now images of each.

And that includes one fresh-faced recruit: former Airman First Class Morgan Freeman.