Lazarus Effect

Sadly this is an ultimately unrewarding film, to read the plot, you'd be forgiven for expecting something dark, original and interesting, when in reality it's generic, flat, and badly realised.

The production values are a little poor, and the storytelling is disjointed, lacks any sort of core plot, at times it seemed to make no sense.

A few times they could have gone for real scares and horror, sadly no such moments ever happened. The dog could have been good.

Quite poor. 4/10

I really wanted The Lazarus Effect to be good. It has a great cast and an interesting premise, and I love horror movies so why should this be any different? Well first of all calling it a horror movie is a bit of a stretch. Yeah, there are "scares" but they're all the cliché flickering lights, someone coming up behind someone else's back, fake out, cheap ass easy jump scares that we've seen a million times and you can see them coming from a mile away.

The best thing this movie has going for it is its atmosphere. It all takes place in an empty laboratory and there are some moments where you feel the claustrophobia of being trapped in a place where dead bodies are kept and weird surgical instruments all over the place. But none of that psychological horror is expounded on. It's just like one second I'm like, "hm, this could actually go somewhere" and then two seconds later a freaky face pops on screen and it's like ugh, why bother.

The acting in this movie is fine for what it is. Aside from the two leads, Evan Peters was the only character I cared about because he was the comic relief but he just isn't given enough to work with. Everything about the movie feels rushed. The characters aren't developed enough. The movie is barely 80 minutes long and it still has dull moments. It also borrows a lot of elements from other horror movies. A good chunk of the movie is straight up "Event Horizon" in a laboratory with some "The Shining" and "Lucy" sprinkled here and there. Sure there is some creepy imagery but it's stuff we've seen a million times. If they had actually built up tension instead of relying on stupid jump scares then maybe the imagery would have some effect. As it stands, it's just like... what a waste.

I can't give this movie a lower score because it did have potential and I liked the cast. There are some moments that are admittedly cool, however brief they are. Oh, and none of the movie makes sense. It starts off plausibly with these doctors performing weird experiments but as soon as sh*t starts to go down, any sense of realism goes out the window. The Lazarus Effect isn't terrible - there's just no reason to see it. Go see "Event Horizon" or "The Shining" if you're in the mood for some real psychological scares.

A team of researchers discovers a serum that can wake the dead. They try it out on a dead dog and sure enough it comes to life, a bit in a bad mood more but nonetheless. Then the university shuts down the program and a corporation takes over and grabs all their research.

They decide to break into the lab and recreate the experiment by resurrecting another dog, this time around with a girl who gets to film everything. When Zoe, one of the doctors, flips on the switch she's electrocuted and dies. Her fiancée can't accept it so he decides to experiment on her and see if he can reanimate her. Sure enough, she also comes back but also not particularly thankful.

There's also something else going on with Zoe. When she was a little girl, she witnessed a room-full of people burn to death when the apartment caught fire and she couldn't help them. She's been traumatized by the experience till now. Slowly though, she starts developing powers. She can complete other people's sentences, she develops telekinesis. And eventually she starts killing her team mates. Of course she takes out the power so it's all dark. The survivors will try to battle her.

At some point the camera girl is taken to the event of the burning apartment and there's a neat revelation.

The Lazarus Effect is a short horror movie with a good premise and the lovely Olivia Wilde. One bit of science was pretty intriguing. But from there things go by the numbers--no lights, people confined in one or two rooms, no character to care for, no interesting dialogue. The movie is well-directed although clearly they could and should have done more with the story.

When I found this film, I thought it would be a cinematic approach to Lazarus Syndrome, which is the apparently spontaneous reactivation of the heartbeat after all attempts to resuscitate a patient in cardiac arrest have failed. This is a very rare situation to happen, and I thought the movie would be about that. I was wrong.

The film's script follows a small group of young scientists who are carrying out a controversial and eventually revolutionary study: the creation of a serum that allows the dead to be reanimated. They are testing it on animals, but a bureaucratic twist ends up denying them the possibility of continuing the study. However, they decide to continue secretly, even though the results of tests on animals have revealed that there are dangerous brain changes, resulting from the application of the serum, in the resuscitated animals. After breaking into the lab at night, the group has an accident and one of the group's scientists dies. They then decide to use the serum to bring her back to life.

The film has an interesting base premise and one that will draw some inspiration from the source of "Frankenstein" and other mad or amoral scientists. These are fascinating and frightening topics, because we naturally fear those men who use their genius and wisdom without any moral concern to guide them. However, the film fails to develop this in the best way: the whole question that leads to the expulsion of the scientists from that laboratory is, to say the least, unconvincing, and any minimally serious scientist would be incapable of performing an experiment on human beings without solid positive results in the previous stages. It is a huge nonsense that tramples everything we consider as a "scientific method".

The cast has its good moments. Olivia Wilde does a really good job, she's convincing, and it's not difficult to sympathize with her character, for her stubbornness and sympathy. Mark Duplass didn't seem so committed or believable to me, but he has some very good moments, particularly in the second half of the film. Sarah Bolger (who I only knew from her role in the "Tudors" series) is beautiful, but in addition to her feminine beauty, she also gives us a mature and interesting interpretation, particularly in the final scenes of the film.

On a technical level, the film doesn't have much to offer us. The cinematography is fairly generic, and the editing appears to have been harsh, with mangled subplots and a total runtime reduced to just over an hour. The sets are good enough, especially the labs used in the filming, and the soundtrack is good enough, though not remarkable.

TA group of scientists led by romantic couple Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde are working on a project to briefly restore brain function in clinically dead patients in hopes of allowing medical professionals longer time to work on critical patients. Their experiments seem to work better than expected when a revived dog continues to live long after the effect of its treatment should have worn off. When a laboratory accident electrocutes one of their own, the others decide to use the technique on the deceased, with seeming success. But they soon realize that something is not quite right with their colleague.

The movie has some style, and some creepy moments, but it works better when the story flirts with how guilt and religion can effect one's psyche in positive and negative ways. The cast is fine, although it was odd seeing the usually funny Duplass in a straight-faced role.