R | 1h 38m | Drama, Military | 2025
“My Dead Friend Zoe,” currently riding high at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, is the directorial debut of former U.S. Army infantry paratrooper and Iraq War Bronze Star recipient Kyle Hausmann-Stokes.
A powerful drama and a dark comedy, it features three fine performances at its core: that of U.S. Army Afghanistan vet Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green of “The Walking Dead”); Dale (Ed Harris), her Vietnam vet grandfather; and her titular dead friend, Zoe (Natalie Morales).
Pesky Support Meetings
Stoicism
Part of the problem is the stoic military mindset: Warriors don’t like to talk about their feelings. In the military spec ops teams, if operators come clean about how they’re coping to the shrink, they could be benched. Nobody wants that, and it’s a habit that dies hard, post-military career.
However, Merit is mired deep in an emotional quagmire, spinning her wheels and struggling to maintain functionality from the pain of losing her best friend. Their cozy-dysfunctional, death-defying, best-friendship keeps the duo insulated from the world.
That is, up until Merit’s estranged, proud, and highly cantankerous grandfather (Harris), who putters around the family’s rural Oregon lake house in his dotage—begins to lose his memory. He suddenly finds himself in need of the one thing he can’t stand: help.
Merit attempts to find solutions for her grandfather. Could she outsource him to an old-folks home? She begins a coincidental, tentative relationship with Alex (Utkarsh Ambudkar), the manager of a nearby assisted-living facility. As she continues to shirk her responsibility to attend Dr. Cole’s support group, her fragile emotional walls start to crumble.
Performances
Martin-Green has a difficult role. She’s carrying around overwhelming grief, seeing combat ghosts, and trying to act normal, all while vacillating between joyful, fun flashback memories and deep, real-time pain. She pulls it all off without a false note.Ed Harris similarly has the challenge of playing a grizzled, mule-headed war vet who speaks disdainfully and unfairly of namby-pamby Afghanistan War vets. He excoriates their catch-all scapegoat term, “PTSD,” while oblivious to the fact that he ministered to his own “shell-shock” and “combat stress” over the years by sharing with his buddies at the local American Legion.
Natalie Morales handily provides the comic relief, but Martin-Green owns this movie, navigating truly complex emotional waters. It’s been hailed by critics as one of the best performances of the year.
“My Dead Friend Zoe” reminds America that we owe those previously once spit-upon Vietnam veterans an apology for not giving them war-hero airport welcoming parties. Things are changing, though. More of America embraces the phrase “Thank you for your service.”
However, there still needs to be a better safety net for the returning soldiers who did the “things no one wants to do.” There’s nothing more shameful in America than a homeless veteran. Hausmann-Stokes’s message is simple: Make America great again by walking a mile in our veterans’ shoes and adding them to your daily gratitude list.
