The Lazarus Effect

Released:  February 27^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Relativity Studios

Starring:  Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Sarah Bolger, Evan Peters, Donald Glover

Directed by:  David Gelb

Written by:  Luke Dawson, Jeremy Slater

Personal Bias Alert:  intrigued by the cast, annoyed by misunderstandings of science

4.7 of 10

            It has to be better than Ouija, right?  That was the last major PG-13 horror release that Blumhouse Productions had its hands in, and it tripped on every hurdle that sat in its way.  Certainly the eclectic, high-quality cast of The Lazarus Effect wouldn’t be drawn to something so asinine.  Certainly there will be something interesting about it.  And, true, the movie’s not asinine, and there is something interesting to it.  However, comparing it to Ouija sets the bar so low that even a muddled but interesting failure like The Lazarus Effect is bound to draw praise.

            There are many aspects of this film that deserves faint praise, as its clear that the filmmakers were trying for something a bit more than your average horror film.  It follows a small group of scientists who are developing a serum that restarts the brain.  Originally intended to help doctors resuscitate people, it also jumpstarts the creation of neural pathways in the brain, making the implications and potential widespread use of the serum astronomically profitable.  In a brutally honest moment, the drug company sponsoring their grant points out a violation in their contract and seizes everything.  When the scientists try to replicate their experiments to prove their claim to the drug, it goes horribly wrong, one of them dies, and the rest decide to bring her back to life with the minimally-tested serum.  Now you have a previously dead person whose brain is working on overdrive and, well, the horror stuff writes itself from there.

There are ideas here about death (obviously), but also about ethics in science, religious belief, and guilt, just to name a few.  It’s one of those films where lots of things get thrown into the pot, and while not all of it pays off, at least something is always simmering in the background to keep your brain engaged.  The main odd thing mixed in, which unfortunately has been played up in the ad campaign, is the horror elements.  Most of the film is, in fact, a thriller, as the scientists spend much of the movie trapped in their basement lab with their friend/girlfriend slowly losing it.  The movie’s at its best when it wallows in this tension, letting uncomfortable moments drag out until the audience is left squirming in their seats.  The moments of horror push this feeling too far and, frankly, are not well done.  They didn’t have the budget nor the imagination to come up with great kills, so most are rather anticlimactic.  Thanks to the marketing, most people will go into this expecting horror, and they will leave disappointed.

To be clear, the failure of the horror is due to the director and his team, not Olivia Wilde’s performance as the resuscitated scientist.  She is well-cast here, good at establishing the relationships early on and then turning on her dead face to become a menacing monster.  The rest of the cast, which includes mumblecore king Mark Duplass, comedian/rapper Donald Glover, American Horror Story vet Evan Peters, and seasoned television actress Sarah Bolger, all turn in fine, if unremarkable, performances.

Director David Gelb, best known for his visually striking documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is a textbook example of the kind of director Blumhouse Productions likes to work with.  He’s promising but untested, and by taking a job with Blumhouse, he gets to show off his eye for visuals and get a moneymaker under his belt.  There are some beautifully staged shots in The Lazarus Effect, including a superb imagine of Wilde lying in bed with the sheets tucked tight around her, subtly bringing to mind the wrappings of a mummy.  Add in a tense, possibly psychotic dog standing over her, and you have a moment that drew gasps in the theater.  It’s these small moments that show off Gelb’s eye the best.  The larger moments, which unfortunately suffer the most from the small budget, undermines much of that promise.

The Lazarus Effect is a difficult one to sum up.  It’s not good, but it’s not bad, either.  Perhaps if it had twenty or so more minutes to flesh out some of its ideas and a couple million more dollars to sell the effects, then it wouldn’t be the mild mess that it is.  But when that mess is due to ambition and not incompetence, well, that’s a forgivable offense.

Other Notes:

Ø  This does suffer from a few lackluster jump scares.

Ø  The writers clearly don’t understand how laboratories work.  You would never be allowed to have food in a lab, you wouldn’t be able to order dead dogs without approval from the school, and college facilities are never this nice.

Ø  “Evil will rise” is one of the most half-assed taglines I’ve seen in a while.