Panic, Poise, and a Blender

MOVIE REVIEW
Dead Giveaway
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Genre: Horror, Comedy
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director(s): Ian Kimble
Writer(s): Ian Kimble
Cast: Ruby Modine, Mikaela Hoover, Scout Taylor-Compton, Suzann Toni Petrongolo, Andrew Vogel, Buddy Caine, Jeremy Feight, Jessie Allen Hitner, Jacquelyne Paige
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Philadelphia Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: The morning after has rarely looked this bad. Jill wakes up to a pounding headache, a dead body beside her, and a closet that may or may not be holding another surprise. That’s the setup, but Ian Kimble’s DEAD GIVEAWAY doesn’t play it straight. It moves with the chaotic tempo of a hangover you can’t shake, turning guilt and panic into a twisted comedy of errors where every decision makes things worse in just the right way. The result is a film that thrives on the energy of its cast, the bite of its writing, and the realization that sometimes the funniest thing about horror is how easily it mirrors bad life choices.

At its core, the movie is about escalation. Jill, played by Ruby Modine, is caught in a situation that snowballs with every discovery. Kimble keeps the tension grounded, never letting the absurdity drift into parody. Instead, he builds the suspense through timing — scenes snap from crisis to crisis without losing their pulse. The horror is immediate, but the humor seeps in through the cracks: the wrong phone call, the ill-timed knock at the door, the way everyone seems slightly too calm about an obviously awful day.

Modine gives Jill a weary kind of relatability. She’s the embodiment of every “this isn’t as bad as it looks” moment that turns out to be much, much worse. Her performance carries both desperation and bite; she’s not a victim, but she’s definitely out of her depth. When Mikaela Hoover enters as Lia, the best friend with too much confidence and not enough foresight, the chemistry is there, instantly. Their conversations sound like two people who’ve been in each other’s lives long enough to know exactly how to push the wrong buttons. That dynamic anchors the entire film. It’s the kind of friendship where support and sabotage look identical depending on the scene.

Every bit of progress Jill and Lia make unravels seconds later, turning the movie into a chain reaction of hilarious mistakes. The more they try to fix things, the deeper they dig, and Kimble’s direction leans into that absurdity without ever losing sight of the stakes. The camera captures the chaos with just enough restraint, keeping the audience right in Jill’s collapsing world. It’s shot like a thriller but edited like a comedy, creating this strange tension between panic and punchline that becomes the movie’s signature rhythm.

The supporting cast helps keep that rhythm alive. Scout Taylor-Compton turns in a sharp, scene-stealing performance that adds just the right amount of edge to the chaos. Andrew Vogel adds tension, grounding the madness with a seriousness that makes the comedy land even harder. It’s a balancing act — too much humor and the danger vanishes; too much intensity and it stops being fun.

Kimble’s script works best when it weaponizes dialogue. Conversations feel improvised yet purposeful, revealing character through banter rather than exposition. The humor isn’t forced; it’s situational, born from characters trapped in a pressure cooker they don’t fully understand. There’s an almost theatrical quality to how scenes unfold — one location bleeds into another, the clock keeps ticking, and Jill’s anxiety becomes the movie’s core. It’s a testament to the writing that even when blood and chaos take over, the laughs never feel out of place.

What makes DEAD GIVEAWAY stand out from other genre hybrids is how confidently it commits to both halves of its personality. It’s not trying to parody thrillers or mock horror tropes; it’s using them as ingredients for something unique. The humor comes from survival instinct, the suspense from emotional honesty. The result feels unpredictable in the best way — not because it’s trying to shock, but because it understands how people really react when their own bad decisions corner them.

By the time the credits roll, what started as a “how did this happen” mystery has transformed into a clever study of friendship, denial, and chaos management. It’s smart, snappy, and self-aware without being smug. Kimble’s debut as writer-director proves he has a sharp eye for tone and timing — the two hardest things to master in a film that wants to make you laugh and wince in the same breath. It’s the kind of movie that gets funnier the longer you think about it, partly because the logic falls apart, and partly because that’s exactly the point.

DEAD GIVEAWAY works because it knows panic is universal. Whether it’s covering up a body or covering up a mistake, the human reaction is the same — scramble, rationalize, repeat. And if you can find a little humor in the chaos along the way, maybe it’s not such a bad morning after all.

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