Philadelphia Film Festival 2025 Review: DEAD GIVEAWAY Serves Up Horror & Comedy In a Cinematically Balanced Brunch

After a wild night of partying, you can wake up next to so many different things the following morning. Maybe you set out some aspirin and water for yourself before going to bed. Or you might be surrounded by all the snack wrappers from the late-night treats that seemed like a good idea while you were drunk. There’s even a chance that you might wake up to a puddle of vomit not far from wherever you passed out. Of course there’s always the chance that you hit it off with someone during your night out and end up waking up next to them. But for the characters of Dead Giveaway, last night’s warm body has unfortunately gone ice cold without the chilly Philly winter rolling in yet.

In writer/director/producer Ian Kimble’s debut feature film that premiered at the 34th Philadelphia Film Festival, Shameless and Happy Death Day star Ruby Modine stars as Jill, who wakes up hungover from her night out in the City of Brotherly Love. However, she also finds that her outfit is covered in blood, courtesy of the dead body in her bed. With the help of her best friend Lia (played by frequent James Gunn collaborator Mikaela Hoover), Jill hopes to retrace her steps from the night before in order to figure out the identity of this corpse and how she ended up sleeping next to it all night.   

The first thing that stands out about Dead Giveaway is the chemistry between its leading ladies. Hoover and Modine have such a natural chemistry that it’s easy to believe that they’re best friends. Their back and forth banter fits together perfectly like a puzzle. Their glances and body language speak just as loud as the pithy dialogue. And the way that they’re constantly dunking on each other not only feels authentic to the characters as long-time friends, but also specifically as people who live in the Delaware Valley region of the United States. The PFF34 program guide compares Jill and Lia to other pop culture tandems like besties from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion or Clueless and honestly the comparisons hold up because Kimble’s characters have the potential to find the same cult following.

Another aspect of Dead Giveaway that’s worth pointing out is the sound design. On the horror side of this horror comedy, the sounds of debilitating thuds on the head, squelching of blood and guts, and sawing through bone come through unsettlingly well. But there is also plenty more comedy to be found in the soundscape of the film as well. A moment towards the end of the 87-minute runtime involving an automatically closing trunk generates some solid laughs, way more than if it was just slammed shut. Because of the excellent execution of funny and scary sounds, there’s yet another layer of balance added to bring the whole thing together. 

If it came out during the heyday of video rental stores, Dead Giveaway would be the perfect sort of movie to take home for a movie night or a sleepover after discovering it on the shelves and being intrigued by the description on the back cover. The film feels like a female-led Dale and Tucker vs. Evil by way of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Knives Out. It’s not as serious as Scream, as fantastical as Idle Hands, or farcical as Clue, but you could definitely see some of the same DNA present in Kimble’s work. But at the end of the day, the filmmaker delivered this world where Jill and Lia stand on their own as engaging characters who take us along on the extremely unexpected detour on their journey to brunch.

In other words, Dead Giveaway is a whole lot of fun. This freshman feature is a worthy addition to the pantheon of horror comedies, so hopefully it gets a proper release and promotion so the audience can find it. But if you’re in the Philadelphia area, you can still catch one more Philadelphia Film Festival screening of the film on Sunday, October 26, 2025. Tickets can be purchased at the Philadelphia Film Society website or at the Film Society East box office.

Movie Score: 4 out of 5