File this one under perfect timing. Deadlocked: Dad of the Dead — the scrappy 2026 zombie horror-comedy known in marketing shorthand as Dad of the Dead — has found its subscription-streaming home, and HORROR BEAT can confirm it arrives on horror platform Screamify on July 1, 2026.
The announcement drops squarely on Father's Day weekend, Sunday, June 21, and the alignment is too clean to ignore: this is a zombie movie literally about a dad fighting to keep his kid alive. A movie about a father protecting his child, dated for streaming right as Father's Day hits the calendar. Marketing, meet motive.
Trapped In A Coffee-Shop Restroom, Surrounded By The Dead
Here's the setup, stated plainly: an accountant accompanies his daughter on a work errand that curdles into a full-blown zombie outbreak. The pair take refuge in a restroom with a handful of strangers, and the mild-mannered numbers guy has to overcome his own fears to protect his child and survive. Most of the 84-minute, NR feature unfolds in that single location — a coffee-shop bathroom — which is exactly the kind of constraint a low-budget indie turns into an asset.
Derek Theler stars as Iverson, the accountant dad at the center of the chaos. Theler has shared that he learned the script the same day he found out his wife was pregnant, and that real-life jolt fed directly into the protective-dad performance on screen. Genre fans and sitcom diehards alike will clock the reunion, too: Theler shares the frame with Melissa Peterman, his co-star from the comedy Baby Daddy.
The ensemble runs deep for an indie of this size. Hayley Law, Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts, John Omohundro, and Stephen Conrad Moore round out the cast. The film was written and directed by Casey Jackson, produced by Austin Herring, and distributed by X4 Pictures.
From VOD To Its First SVOD Home
This isn't Dad of the Dead's first time in the wild. The film has been available on transactional VOD — Prime, Vudu, Google Play — plus disc since May 12, 2026. What it hasn't had until now is a subscription-streaming address. Screamify becomes its SVOD home, meaning subscribers can stream it without an individual rental or purchase.
The production leans into its scrappy roots, favoring practical blood effects over digital gloss — a fitting approach for a USA-made, English-language indie built around a tight location and a tighter premise. It's lean, it's mean, and it's got a dad with a calculator-brain learning to swing.
Mark the date: Deadlocked: Dad of the Dead streams on Screamify starting July 1, 2026.
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