Sundance 2025 Review: DEAD LOVER, Strange, Weird, Wonderful

Lead Critic; San Francisco, California
Sundance 2025 Review: DEAD LOVER, Strange, Weird, Wonderful
Both singular in vision and singular in execution, filmmaker Grace Glowicki’s fantastic horror-comedy, Dead Lover, must be seen to be disbelieved. It must be seen to be believed too.
 
Hyper-stylized, archly written in a hilarious camp tone (when it’s not being achingly sincere), and floridly performed, Dead Lover practically begs for unconditional entry in the cult film canon. If, in time, it reaches such exalted status, it’ll be richly deserved for Glowicki and her equally demented co-conspirators in delivering one of the oddest, strangest, weirdest films in recent memory. 
 
Opening with a quote from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, thus tipping the proverbial sailor's cap to one of the key influences for Glowicki's film, Dead Lover centers on the nameless Gravedigger (Glowicki), a desperately lonely digger of graves. Due to her lowly regarded profession and the stench of death that covers her from unwashed hair to unwashed toes, the Gravedigger can’t find a romantic partner. It’s an obsession she relates to her only audience, the moon and, of course, the audience on the other side of the screen (i.e., us). 
 
Working on a perfume to cover her ungodly stench doesn’t get her any closer to finding her soul mate, but when a famous opera singer dies prematurely, the Gravedigger has an unexpected meet-and-greet with the deceased woman’s brother, the Poet (co-writer Ben Petrie). Rather than finding the Gravedigger’s stench a complete turn-off like any regular fellow, the Poet finds it a turn-on, leading to a brief, intense romance that irrevocably changes both of their lives: The Gravedigger's dreams of a happy future with a committed romantic partner and the Poet of a woman who satisfies his deepest, possibly unnatural urges.
 
But to every romance, a turn of events will separate the starry lovers. The Poet drowns returning from experimental treatment abroad, leaving the Gravedigger completely bereft and eager to bring what’s left of her dead lover, a single finger retrieved by passing sailors, back to life, however limited or diminished. A dabbler in science like a certain Doctor Frankenstein, the Gravedigger gets to bloody, gruesome work, putting her mind and her laboratory to the task of resurrecting both her dead lover and whatever faint hopes she has for their future together. 
 
Shot on a theatrical stage with limited props, partial sets, and a cast doing double, triple, or quadruple duty, up to and including old-school gender switches (female performers playing male characters and vice versa), Dead Lover looks, feels, and sounds like a long-lost Guy Maddin masterpiece, except it isn’t. It’s far more than the sum of its cinematic and theatrical influences (Goth everything, old-school filmmaking effects, DIY aesthetic). Dead Lover synthesizes those influences into something wholly original, transcending them in the process. 
 
And with Glowicki giving her Gravedigger a bizarrely appropriate Cockney accent throughout, covering her onscreen character with a noticeably ill-fitting wig, pounds of pancake makeup, and smears of grime and dirt, the overall effect runs contrary to audience expectations. Rather than a pathetic, even repellent pariah worthy of audience condemnation for her nonconformity to social norms, the Gravedigger’s relatable obsession with human connection predictably leads to all kinds of oddly persusaive, oft-hilarious, horror-related havoc. 
 
Dead Lover premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Visit the film's page at the official festival site for more information

Dead Lover

Director(s)
  • Grace Glowicki
Writer(s)
  • Grace Glowicki
  • Ben Petrie
Cast
  • Grace Glowicki
  • Ben Petrie
  • Leah Doz
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Ben PetrieDead LoverGrace GlowickiSundance Film FestivalLeah Doz

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