In the deeply affecting dramedy My Dead Friend Zoe, Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) is a US Army veteran back from her deployment in Afghanistan. Merit is talented, disciplined and highly focused, but there’s something unresolved from her military service that is obstructing her transition to civilian life. We know that Merit has issues because she is often accompanied by her sassy BFF from the Army, Zoe (Natalie Morales), or rather by Zoe’s ghost, because Zoe is dead.
Zoe is high-spirited, playful and sarcastic, and usually a lot of fun. But Zoe detests sitting-in-a-circle support groups, so she isn’t encouraging Merit to complete a a mandatory program led by a psychologist specializing in combat PTSD (Morgan Freeman). Meanwhile, Merit’s military role model, her crusty Vietnam vet grandfather (Ed Harris), is becoming unable to live by himself at the family’s legacy lake house; Merit’s mom has tasked her to move him, against his will, into a safer setting.
We get the back story of Merit and Zoe’s deployment in flashback. We’re well into the movie before we learn how Zoe died, which I’m not going to spoil, because it’s central to the meaning of the film. I can say that the movie touches on PTSD, the veteran experience and the path to resilience.
My Dead Friend Zoe is an impressive first feature for writer-director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, himself a decorated Army paratrooper who served in Iraq. The screenplay is brilliant, especially because the ingenious device of the very funny Zoe lightens what could have otherwise unwatchably bleak. Hausmann-Stokes wants us to appreciate a grim fact – what has killed more more members of the US military in the era of Middle Eastern wars than combat. He has succeeded in achieving a remarkably engaging movie with a satisfying ending.
Martin-Green carries the film with a very strong performance as Meit, and Morales is brightly charismatic as Zoe.
This might be the best film on the transition from wartime military service to civilian society since The Best Years of Our Lives., and it’s one of the Best Movies of 2025. My Dead Friend Zoe can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.