Dead Lover is a 2025 Canadian thriller film directed, written, and produced by and starring Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, and Lowen Morrow.[1] Inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it follows a woman's attempt to resurrect her deceased lover.[2]
The film debuted at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in the Midnight category on January 24, 2025.[3] Yellow Veil Pictures serves as its sales agency.[4]
With the film's production setting in a black box theater, Glowicki also wanted the film to be similar to "DIY, low-budget experimental theater."[2] The film's shooting there took 16 days.[5]
Critical reception
Josh Korngut at Dread Central gave the film four out of five stars and called it "an outrageously comedic and transgressive love story" that "blurs the lines between beauty and grotesqueness, life and death, crafting a visceral, punk-tinged quilt of grief, transformation, and the lengths we’ll go for love."[6]
Vikram Murthi at IndieWire gave the film a C+, calling it "admirable" but concluding that its bit was "frustratingly static" and that its "prolonged, forced zaniness unfortunately taints everything it touches."[7]
Jacob Oller at The A.V. Club gave the film a C and called its bit "charming" but lamented that "as the thin resurrection-gone-wrong film wears on, Glowicki's mugging becomes more grating than funny, and its amusing novelty begins to rot after being unnaturally extended past its normal lifespan."[8]
