Serving as something of a spiritual sister to the 2000s cult classic Dude, Where’s My Car?, Ian Kimble‘s Dead Giveaway is a biting mystery of a comedy that continually elevates beyond its premise due to the winning dynamic of leads Ruby Modine (Happy Death Day) and Mikaela Hoover (Superman).
Across a slick 88 minutes, in one predominant location, the black comedy sets up its hook near-immediately, with Jill (Modine) awaking from a night of partying she doesn’t remember, sharing her bed with a bloodied corpse. She’s naturally taken aback, frightened and confused at once, and hopes she can piece the events together that lead up to this stranger’s demise. Enter catty bestie, Lia (Hoover).
More concerned with making it to their brunch reservation, Lia is the stern, though anarchic voice of reason in the situation; though she does go on a tangent about penis imprints in Jill’s memory foam mattress in a dialogue piece that speaks to how crazy her thought process can be. As out there as she sounds, she’s never quite as extreme as some of Jill’s suggestions for how they either get rid of the body or find out his identity (it usually always involved dismembering him), but such is the stronghold Kimble has on proceedings, Dead Giveaway manages to pivot into one outlandish sequence to another without ever losing track of itself.
The sketchy persona of Jill’s roommate, Sarah (Suzann Toni Petrongolo), the handsome rotation of gentleman callers (Jeremy Feight‘s Tony, Buddy Caine‘s Mark, and Jessie Allen Hitner‘s Jay) all knocking on her townhouse door at one point or another, and the unhinged Vicky (Scout Taylor-Compton), who may or may not be the girlfriend of the deceased, all come into play within the whodunnit frame of Kimble’s spirited picture, with his confident script managing to successfully place them altogether in the film’s culmination without ever feeling as if they’ve been forgotten. Essentially, Kimble never paints himself to a corner he can’t get out of, and given how coincidentally chaotic Dead Giveaway can be, that’s a feat all within itself.
A simple film that makes the most of its limitations, and quite neatly packages itself together when all is said and done, Dead Giveaway works as much as it does because it lets Modine and Hoover loose on material that so often feels designed to celebrate male friendships.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Dead Giveaway screened as part of this year’s Philadelphia Film Festival, which ran between October 16th and 26th, 2025.
