Official Synopsis
After waking up hungry, with a hangover and a murdered stranger in her bed, Jill’s (Ruby Modine) day spirals into chaos as she navigates a tied-up man in her closet, an unconscious roommate, and a knife to her best friend’s neck. The goal? To get to brunch by 3:00pm.
Review
Writer/director Ian Kimble serves up a fast-paced, screwball-with-suspense comedy with horror and thriller elements with Dead Giveaway. Genuinely funny and boasting solid performances, the feature is a hoot.
Driving Dead Giveaway are the humorous interaction between lead characters Jill (Ruby Modine) and her best friend Lia (Mikaela Hoover) and the chemistry between the two actors, which makes them feel like actual best friends. Their comic timing with each other is highly engaging.
Kimble starts with a hungover Jill whose memories of the night before are hazy waking up next to a bloody dead man. From there, he escalates the tension and the humor as Lia gets pulled, quite reluctantly, into Jill’s mess, with Jill’s roommate Sarah (Suzann Toni Petrongolo) wondering why the pair is acting so strangely. A late-arriving but pivotal character arrives in the form of Vicky, with Scout-Taylor Compton playing the role with manic energy.
The violence is mostly played for laughs — except for when it isn’t, which will cause many a jaw to drop. The emphasis with Dead Giveaway is much more on the humorous side rather than the horrific, but fear not, aficionados of the red stuff in their films, the film has plenty of that factor.
Highly entertaining throughout with snappy dialogue and amusing performances and situations, Dead Giveaway comes highly recommended.
Dead Giveaway had its World Premiere at Philadelphia Film Festival and will have an encore screening on Sunday, October 26, 2025. For more information, visit https://filmadelphia.org/movies/dead-giveaway/.
