Parents' Guide to My Dead Friend Zoe

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 often genuinely funny. The feature directing debut of Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, who also co-wrote the screenplay, My Dead Friend Zoe is immediately clever about the way it introduces its ghost-fantasy facet, with a smash-cut from the heat of Afghanistan to a stale group meeting session. Morales is very funny as Zoe, standing up and shouting at the veterans to stop their whining before we realize ... she isn't really there. Merit is the only one who can see her. But Zoe continues to develop; she's not just a funny, helpful ghost. She has a real purpose.

Subplots about group therapy and Alzheimer's might not sound like the most entertaining things, but the movie eases into them, avoiding hysteria and melodrama. It focuses primarily on character. Rather than scenes of Merit's grandfather losing his memory, we get a great scene in which he rages about Merit not understanding his system of trash and recycling (he releases his rage in a more innocuous direction). Harris gives a very strong performance here, matched by Freeman's compassionate one. But it's Martin-Green who does the most heavy lifting, dealing with all of this stuff that's coming from multiple directions all at once and tying everything together. My Dead Friend Zoe serves as a strong reminder of the seriousness of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) without sounding like a public service announcement. Viewers learn at the end that all of the folks in Merit's therapy group are real-life veterans, a fact that's simply folded nicely into the fabric of the story and helps make it feel even more human.