Dead Lover (2024) Retail Release Review

Dead Lover (2024) Retail Release Review

Following its world premiere at Sundance, Dead Lover has enjoyed an impressive festival run, screening at SXSW, Night Visions, TIFF, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the Soho Horror Festival. Directed and co-written by Grace Glowicki, this delightfully eccentric horror-comedy blends the macabre with the absurd, drawing inspiration from Frankenstein, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Death Becomes Her while carving out a singular identity of its own.

The film follows a lonely gravedigger, perpetually carrying the scent of the dead, who finally finds the man of her dreams. Their romance is tragically cut short when he drowns at sea, prompting the grief-stricken woman to embark on a series of increasingly deranged scientific experiments in an effort to bring him back. Unsurprisingly, the results are as disastrous as they are hilarious, leading to a bizarre tale of resurrection, obsession, and unexpected love.

Glowicki stars alongside Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, and Lowen Morrow, with each performer taking on multiple roles throughout the film. In keeping with its offbeat sensibilities, festival screenings were accompanied by “Stink-O-Vision” scratch-and-sniff cards, featuring ten scents triggered by on-screen prompts. For review purposes, my card arrived by post, and while several aromas proved memorable, Scent Number 2 certainly earned its description: “Funky.”

What makes Dead Lover particularly refreshing is its embrace of creative limitation. At a time when many low-budget genre productions gravitate toward the familiarity of found-footage formats, Glowicki and her collaborators use their constraints as a springboard for invention. The result is a film that feels genuinely original, recalling an era when independent filmmaking thrived on ingenuity rather than spectacle.

While the narrative occasionally loses some momentum in its latter stages, the film’s ambition more than compensates for any unevenness. Its wildly imaginative approach transforms familiar Frankenstein-inspired material into something uniquely strange and consistently entertaining. The humour lands with impressive regularity, balancing slapstick absurdity with a darkly comic sensibility that never overstays its welcome.

Visually, Dead Lover remains engaging from beginning to end. Shot on 16mm, the film’s handcrafted aesthetic and minimalist sets evoke the intimacy of a stage production without ever feeling static or confined. Instead, the stripped-back design enhances the dreamlike atmosphere, allowing the performances and inventive storytelling to take centre stage. Throughout, the ensemble’s multi-role work is remarkably assured, with each actor effortlessly navigating the film’s shifting tones and eccentric characterisations.

There is, quite simply, nothing else quite like Dead Lover. Its willingness to take risks, coupled with its inventive visual style and unapologetically odd sense of humour, makes it one of the most distinctive genre offerings of the year. Even when it stumbles, its creativity and charm remain impossible to resist.

Dead Lover will be released on all major digital platforms from June 22nd and on Blu-Ray from 7th September.