DEAD LOVE movie poster | ©2026 Cartuna x DWECK

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, Lowen Morrow
Writers: Grace Glowicki & Ben Petrie
Director: Grace Glowicki
Distributor: Cartuna x DWECK
Release Date: March 20, 2026

In an attempt to gauge relative response, this reviewer described what happens in DEAD LOVER to two separate individuals. They had identical reactions: “That’s the weirdest plot I’ve ever heard.”

Even allowing for the possibility that these two folks don’t get out much and therefore have less basis for comparison, DEAD LOVER may be the most gonzonana riff on FRANKENSTEIN ever. The competition for that title includes THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and RE-ANIMATOR, to say nothing of the earlier-this-month’s “THE BRIDE!”

The strangeness extends to both substance and style. Without spoiling some key flourishes, it can be said that it’s not exactly clear when or even where DEAD LOVER takes place. Given the costumes and accents of most characters, it appears to be nineteenth-century England.

Directed by Grace Glowicki from a screenplay by Glowicki & Ben Petrie, DEAD LOVER introduces us to the Gravedigger (Glowicki), a hardworking, lonely woman whose greatest wish in life is for someone to love who she can hold onto “forever, and ever.”

The Gravedigger’s profession means that she has a smell that most people find off-putting. But then the brother (Petrie) of a dead opera singer (Leah Doz) gets a whiff of the Gravedigger and is positively besotted.

For a while, the Gravedigger and her Lover (as the credits refer to them) are together in carnal bliss. But then tragedy occurs. The Gravedigger, who has sworn to never give up on love no matter what, begins investigating how to bring her Lover back, using techniques not dramatized before (and no, it’s not via sex, though DEAD LOVER has plenty of it).

What happens after this is likely to leave viewers progressively more slack-jawed with amazement as the film continues.

But the storyline isn’t DEAD LOVER’s only uncommon attribute. The backgrounds are generally black, with just enough furniture and props to enable the action. There’s mist when it’s needed; a wolf attack is, again, idiosyncratic. Everything is occurring within the movie’s strictly constructed own universe.

Furthermore, with the exception of Glowicki, the other three actors – Petrie, Doz, and Lowen Morrow, whose most important role is the Widower, left bereft by the passing of his opera singer wife – all play multiple characters, as they would in an ensemble theatre production.

The actors also deliver their lines as though they’re performing Shakespeare, or THE ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, or maybe an episode of FAERIE TALE THEATRE. They’re all in on the joke and on the same wavelength, never winking at us or the mounting insanity.

Interestingly, Glowicki and Petrie starred together in last month’s HONEY BUNCH, another film about the sci-fi/horror lengths to which someone may go in the name of love.

DEAD LOVER is a true indie film. There’s no sign anywhere of interference with the sensibility on display here, no indication that the filmmakers compromised what they were doing. Whether one finds it audacious and hilarious, or too mannered or too something else to be any fun, this much is certain: there’s nothing else out there quite like it.

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