THE LAZARUS EFFECT
DIRECTOR: David Gelb
CAST: Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Donald Glover, Evan Peters, Sarah Bolger
CLASSIFICATION: 13VH
RUNNING TIME: 83 minutes
RATING: **
You’d think that the young scientists in the horror The Lazarus Effect would know better than to try to raise the dead. After all, Holly-wood has demonstrated in countless films including Frankenstein, Pet Sematary and Flatliners that the results usually don’t turn out very well.
And so it goes again.
It’s directed by David Gelb, who makes the transition to horror with reasonable effectiveness.
Set almost entirely within the confines of a laboratory in Berkeley, California, it concerns the efforts of a ragtag group of researchers led by the driven Frankenstein, uh, Frank (Duplass) and his more philosophically minded fiancee, Zoe (Wilde). The team also includes Nike (Glover), who has a not-so-secret crush on Zoe; Clay (Peters), who partakes of a toke now and again while working; and videographer Eva (Bolger, pictured), who’s documenting the experiments.
The group’s study began as an effort to prolong the time window in which a recently deceased person can be revived, but unbeknown to the university sponsoring them, they’ve expanded its parameters considerably. And their work seems to be paying off, as they succeed in reviving a dead dog using a gloppy white serum and a well-timed jolt of electricity.
Unfortunately, the canine begins acting weirdly, exhibiting aggressive behaviour, refusing to eat and climbing on Zoe’s bed to stare ominously at her while she sleeps.
“What if we ripped him out of doggie heaven?” Zoe worriedly asks Frank.
When the university gets wind of their activities, they shut down the project, with a pharmaceutical company swooping in to seize all of their results.
Fortunately, or not, they’ve managed to hold on to at least one batch of the serum, so they decide to go rogue and replicate the experiment under cover of night. But a freak accident results in Zoe getting electrocuted, so she becomes the subject instead.
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 tropes, with Zoe, who’s haunted by horrific memories of a traumatic childhood incident, suddenly exhibiting the ability to read thoughts and move objects with her mind. Death clearly doesn’t become her, as she’s transformed into a vengeful, Carrie-like figure who begins laying waste to her colleagues in extremely violent fashion.
Becoming progressively less interesting as the body count rises and Zoe’s eyes turn hellishly black, the film squanders whatever potential it had, not to mention the talents of such performers as Duplass and Wilde, who clearly deserve better.
Director Gelb displays a reasonably sure hand in his debut narrative effort, although he relies far too heavily on predictable jump scares and a recurring motif in which the screen goes black for a few seconds before revealing the next scary visual.
“This is too much weird shit,” declares one of the characters, as if anticipating the eventual bad reviews. – The Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Pathology or Unrest, you’ll like this.