A new movie starring Morgan Freeman has blown many of his other movies out of the water on Rotten Tomatoes. Freeman is an iconic actor who got his start on television with his breakout role in the kids show The Electric Company. However, he quickly took on more and more roles in features and has so far been nominated for Oscars for his performances in five of them, namely 1987’s Street Smart, 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy, 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption, 2004’s Million Dollar Baby (for which he won), and 2009’s Invictus.
Morgan Freeman has also enjoyed commercial success, having starred in a variety of hit blockbuster movies including the Dark Knight trilogy, Bruce Almighty, Deep Impact, and the Now You See Me franchise. Many of these movies have earned solid scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and in fact 22 of them have been officially Certified Fresh by the review aggregator platform. However, one new movie has emerged at the head of the pack.
My Dead Friend Zoe Has Earned One Of Morgan Freeman’s Best Scores
It Is A Hit With Critics On Rotten Tomaotes
My Dead Friend Zoe has earned a solid score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Morgan Freeman movie, which is the feature debut of director and co-writer Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, follows Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), a veteran whose return to civilian life is haunted by visions of her friend Zoe (Natalie Morales), who died in combat. The ensemble cast of the movie, which debuted at SXSW in 2024 before its 2025 theatrical release, also includes Ed Harris, Gloria Reuben, Thom Tran, and Utkarsh Ambudkar.
Kyle Hausmann-Stokes co-wrote My Dead Friend Zoe with award-winning author A. J. Bermudez.
Rotten Tomatoes has now calculated an official score for My Dead Friend Zoe. 65 different critics have weighed in and given the movie a near-perfect 95% score with an average rating of 7.7 out of 10. While the score could fluctuate as more reviews are added, at the time of writing, it is tied with 1989’s Glory as the ninth highest-rated movie starring Morgan Freeman on the platform.
One of these positive reactions came from ScreenRant‘s own Patrice Witherspoon, whose 7 out of 10 My Dead Friend Zoe review called the movie “a great watch with family and friends.” Read a longer excerpt below:
When Merit attempts to open up about her trauma, the lighting reflects the PTSD through dimming and flashes. The direction and score during these sequences are great as well, as they give us just enough to boost our anxiety before pulling back at the right moment to pique our curiosity with a dash of empathy. It has just enough style to render it a memorable feature and the perfect amount of tenderness required to ground it. My Dead Friend Zoe is an indie gem equivalent to a warm embrace needed after a hard day.
What This Means For My Dead Friend Zoe
It Ranks Even Higher Among His Narrative Features
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his iconic voice, many of the top-rated Morgan Freeman movies on Rotten Tomatoes are documentaries that he narrated, including March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step (100%), Meeting the Beatles in India (100%), and Born to Be Wild (98%). If every documentary appearance or voiceover role is excised, then My Dead Friend Zoe rises even higher, tied for No. 3 as his best-reviewed narrative feature behind the animated hit The LEGO Movie (96%) and the Clint Eastwood Western Unforgiven (96%).
Source: Rotten Tomatoes

My Dead Friend Zoe
- Release Date
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March 9, 2024
- Runtime
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98 Minutes
- Director
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Kyle Hausmann-Stokes
- Writers
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Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, A.J. Bermudez, Cherish Chen
- Producers
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Terri Feldman Lubaroff, Travis Kelce, Richard Silverman