A timely and touching movie which features an outstanding performance by Ed Harris

| Original Score: 6/10 | Mar 23, 2025

While the film doesn't ultimately match the strength of a lead performance from Sonequa Martin-Green, My Dead Friend Zoe is often emotionally compelling and a unique approach to the examination of PTSD.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 20, 2025

Despite strong performances from Sonequa Martin-Green and Ed Harris, the film’s powerful reminder of how veterans are so often cast aside finds itself overshadowed by the wacky ghostly manifestation of the title and other subplots.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 16, 2025

My Dead Friend Zoe will raise awareness among civilians about the realities of the veteran experience. But, if we're all really lucky, its representational qualities, bolstered by Green's performance, will actually save some lives.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Mar 13, 2025

My Dead Friend Zoe runs a little long in its final act, but it ultimately succeeds as an exploration of shell shock and mental health, a crowd-pleasing dramedy and a show of appreciation and brotherhood to servicemembers of all stripes.

| Mar 12, 2025

The always dependable Morales delivers the goods here. The same can also be said for Martin-Green, Ambudkar, and of course, Freeman.

| Original Score: B | Mar 10, 2025

... the longer it goes, and the more patient you are watching it, the emotional elements of the story take hold and are hard to dismiss.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 8, 2025

Director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes mines his own military experiences for a moving story about trauma and healing

| Mar 7, 2025

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 7, 2025

Hausmann-Stokes may be a first-time director, but he knows his subject matter well, and cares deeply. You can feel the earnestness in which he tells this specific story with its broader message and plea to help care more for veterans’ PTSD plights.

| Original Score: B | Mar 7, 2025

A fairly pedestrian message movie, but the workmanlike, often bumpy approach–resembling that of a solid telefilm–doesn’t seriously dilute the power of the message, which centers on the psychological damage suffered by soldiers who’ve served in combat.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 5, 2025

My Dead Friend Zoe is a terrifically funny and very thought provoking film. It isn’t one that will leave you easily and you won’t want it to.

| Original Score: A | Mar 5, 2025

This high-concept, diverse dramedy draws familiar elements from many Hollywood movies, but it ties them together in a way that feels genuinely emotional and is often genuinely funny.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 5, 2025

Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales are terrific. The film is funny, touching, and the best moving-going experience I’ve had this year.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 5, 2025

"My Dead Friend Zoe" is an uncomplicated film about complicated people, patiently working through trauma and grief in ways that are sometimes funny, sometimes exacerbating, and always deeply human.

| Mar 5, 2025

The film speaks honestly and compassionately about the trauma soldiers carry with them, and the difficulty of moving forward.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 4, 2025

It isn’t a glorified didactic training film. Martin-Green offers a heartbreaking depiction of a guilty grief that doesn’t want to let go, that regards every temptation to happiness as a betrayal. She’s superb.

| Mar 4, 2025

Hausmann-Stokes's [film] ...remind audiences, many of whom have already put both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in their individual and collective rear-view mirrors, of the real human cost involved ... and the care they’re due when they return home.

| Mar 4, 2025

MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE sounds like the title of a horror film, while in fact, it’s a comedy/drama that proves to be an emotionally powerful story about what life is like for veterans.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 4, 2025

My Dead Friend Zoe is just odd enough to be worth its 100 or so minutes.

| Mar 4, 2025