My Dead Friend Zoe is a frustrating movie with an important message. It is about the horrors of PTSD and protecting our veterans after they return from war. There is forced humor, an unnecessary romantic subplot, melodrama and then the very real struggle faced by people returning home from warzones. It has tremendous intentions and a few genuinely powerful moments. It is also meandering and so paint-by-numbers that you can tell approximately how much time is left based on the obvious story beats that still need to be fulfilled.
Though I want to recommend it, this falls squarely into the middle ground of getting its points across while being too clunky to hit its mark successfully. I bounced back-and-forth between feeling something and being bored. The strongest scenes almost make this worthwhile, despite how painfully familiar all of this is.
Merit has been back from Afghanistan for a several years, but cannot get over her trauma. She is stuck, haunted by the memory of Zoe, a beloved fellow soldier whose death she blames herself for. She literally carries that grief with her, manifesting in conversations with Zoe that only take place in her head and refusing to discuss her with anyone. Can Merit move on? Or will her past consume her?
That general story is moving. However, then there is also Merit’s mom asking her to help get her unwilling widower grandfather, entering the early stages of Alzheimer’s, into a nursing home. And a tentative romance between Merit and Alex, the charming, awkward, guy who runs the nursing home. Oh, plus the court-ordered support group Merit is unable to share in.
Writer/Director Kyle Hausman-Stokes tries to mix those things in with Merit’s inability to escape her thoughts of Zoe, yet they feel like small-time sitcom stuff in comparison. That is well-trod ground with nothing new to be said. Those characters aren’t developed; they’re pencil-thin tropes to try to squeeze something feel-good out of a topic that doesn’t need it. What Merit (and far too many veterans) is going through is too serious to trivialize with clichés and greeting-card platitudes.
Even the casting has a lazy predictability to it. Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman are both terrific actors, who have shined in so many different roles. Harris is given basically nothing to do as Merit’s angry grandfather, whose emotions rise and fall depending on how Merit is supposed to be feeling in any given moment. Freeman could play the support group leader worried about a woman keeping her pain inside in his sleep. His character is so absurdly underwritten, only existing to create some unconvincing stakes (Merit will have to go to court if she doesn’t open up in group). It is not enough to have these great actors; you have to make use of them or it means nothing.
Sonequa Martin-Green has a steadiness to her as Merrit. She doesn’t know how to get past her suffering, yet she will not break. Natalie Morales, as Zoe, has a somewhat thankless task. We need to see what she means to Merrit and she also has to be annoying enough to see how the failure to let go of her is hurting Merrit. They have good chemistry together, but Zoe’s snide quips get old real fast.
There have been plenty of movies about soldiers being haunted by their battlefield experiences. My Dead Friend Zoe (97 minutes, without the end credits) tries to make that a little more literal. That approach turns out to be too easy, too heavy-handed, to have the emotional impact on viewers that the filmmakers intended.
2¾ out of 5
Cast:
Sonequa Martin-Green as Merit
Natalie Morales as Zoe
Ed Harris as Dale
Morgan Freeman as Dr. Cole
Gloria Reuben as Kris
Utkarsh Ambudkar as Alex
Directed by Kyle Hausman-Stokes
Screenplay by Kyle Hausman-Stokes and A.J. Bermudez
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