Metacritic-Rezensionen

The Lazarus Effect is a smart, unsubtle chiller that should leave even a dedicated horror fan shaken and spooked from its opening scene’s revelations to its final scene’s implications.

There’s no point in overselling a conventional, rarely surprising horror picture, a picture that manages one good, cheap jolt and a solid hour of dread. But Lazarus reminds us that a genre overwhelmed by junk fare doesn’t need to be that way. It’s not effects, gore or novelty that matter. It’s all in the execution, and electrocution.

With its homages to "Frankenstein," "The Exorcist" and "The Shining," director David Gelb's The Lazarus Effect is at least smarter and tenser than last year's crop of tame horror films.

Forget the minor, derivative scares in The Lazarus Effect. The real jolt here is seeing a well-known name playing a monstrous evil force.

The screenplay by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater begins promisingly enough with its slow-burn examination of the various moral issues involved. But once Zoe is resuscitated the proceedings descend into familiar horror film film tropes.

Aside from the waste of talent, the frustrating thing about The Lazarus Effect is how it cheats. Good horror movies work on internal logic.

David Gelb doesn't evince so much as a single compositional sleight of hand, merely delighting in turning lights on and off and watching Zoe appear in random places.

Despite classy lead performances by Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde, the movie, from horror factory Blumhouse (known for cranking out sequels in the “Paranormal Activity” franchise, among others), relies too heavily on reanimated monster movie cliches and scientific gibberish to keep it alive.

You’ve seen this movie before with peppier actors, and not tethered to a visually uninteresting set that looks like a remainder from a 10-year-old episode of CSI.

There’s no doubt at all that the schlocky The Lazarus Effect should have been euthanized and shipped directly to video rather than haunting movie theaters, however briefly.