Shortly after a gravedigger meets her dream suitor, tragedy hits when he’s killed at sea, abruptly ending their visceral romance. Overcome with grief, and with only his severed finger to remember him, she’s faced with just one choice: to resurrect her extinguished lover by planting that finger in a flowerpot until it grows hideously long, then stitching it to the corpse of a recently buried soprano. But when the gravedigger gives her monster new life, naturally, it’s not quite the paramour she remembers…
This is Dead Lover. And in opening with the Mary Shelley quote, “There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand”, star and director Grace Glowicki declares that she wants to align herself with the seminal Frankenstein — just in the most absurd, delightfully low-brow way imaginable.
Shot like episodes of The Mighty Boosh or Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Glowicki hurls you into a universe which feels more cabaret than anything that belongs on the screen. Her characters, dialogue, sound effects and stage sets feel charmingly rudimentary and vaudevillian. And for the audience, Dead Lover is more akin to live performances like Elf Lyons’ Gorgon: A Horror Story or The Tiger Lillies’ retelling of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” than any cinematic adaptations of Shelley (or pictures like Re-Animator and Return of the Living Dead 3).
While the medium may feel misplaced (albeit intentionally), Glowicki, beside co-writer and co-star Ben Petrie, has hatched something truly endearing and grotesquely funny in Dead Lover. The scratch-and-sniff cards handed to the audience — which include odours like ‘Opium’ and ‘Ghost Puke’ — are just another unexpected touch that moves the viewer closer to the creator, and even further into their world. Glowicki reminds us that cinema (and cinemas) can be a beautifully communal experience when joy supersedes budget.
DISTRIBUTOR
Lightbulb
DIRECTOR
Grace Glowicki
SCREENPLAY
Grace Glowicki
Ben Petrie
CAST
Grace Glowicki
Ben Petrie
CINEMA
20 March 2026
