The Lazarus Effect

David Gelb's The Lazarus Effect is a particularly junky thriller (in genre, not in effect) about a bunch of young scientists who are smart enough to figure out a way to bring somebody back from the dead, but are not smart enough to survive some of the oldest horror cliches in the book.  The movie is dead on arrival, holds nothing of interest in its brief 83 minute run time, looks cheaply made, and is a huge waste of a mostly talented cast.

The plot centers on a scientist couple who are romantically involved, Frank (Mark Duplass) and Zoe (Olivia Wilde).  They're supposed to be married by now, but their experiment to bring the dead back to life has consumed all their time.  There are hints early on that Zoe is starting to feel regrets about putting her work before her pending marriage to Frank.  There are also hints that one of the lab assistants, Niko (Donald Glover), has feelings for Zoe.  These potential plot points are brought up, but never really elaborated on afterward.  It's almost as if the screenplay can hardly muster enough enthusiasm for the slightest bit of character development.  Also taking part in the experiment is fellow lab assistant Clay (Evan Peters) and newcomer Eva (Sarah Bolger), who carries a camcorder with her at all times, almost as if she hopes the movie will become a "found footage" film at some point, so she'll have something to do.

As the film opens, the group has succeeded in bringing a dog back to life.  After returning to the land of the living, the dog is despondent, refuses to eat and is genuinely lethargic, except for when it suddenly becomes violently aggressive at odd times for seemingly no reason.  Again, this is a potential plot point that could have been interesting in another movie, but it is never really elaborated on here.  Despite their success, the group has their funding cut and the experiment is dropped entirely.  Not wanting to lose the progress they've made, the group breaks into their old lab that night, and attempts to repeat the experiment with another dog.  However, something goes wrong this time, and Zoe is fatally electrocuted in the process.  After mere seconds of grieving, Frank puts his dead girlfriend up on the operating table, and proceeds to bring her back to life.

Just like the dog, Zoe seems a bit odd when she comes back to life.  The team chalks it up to Zoe trying to come to terms with what she's just gone through, but there are ominous signs that something is not right.  She gains telekinetic powers, can read people's minds, and develops the habit of disappearing and reappearing somewhere else whenever the lights go out.  The movie seems to hint that Zoe went to hell, and has brought back something evil that is now controlling her.  Zoe describes hell as being forced to live the worst moment in your life over and over in an infinite loop.  Watching The Lazarus Effect, I could kind of understand what she means.  This is a repetitive and dull movie where people keep on making the same mistakes and doing the same stupid things over and over, and you're trapped there in the theater, forced to watch it happen over and over again.

The movie's most repeated scare tactic is to have the lights suddenly go out, and have Zoe disappear, then later reappear somewhere else while a loud, clanging music chord blasts on the soundtrack.  I imagine very few people will find this effectively scary, unless they are creeped out by faulty electrical wiring.  Even when Zoe is in full "demon mode" and killing off her former colleagues one by one, the scares never come, due to the sometimes confusing editing during the more violent moments.  This implies that the movie was heavily cut in order to secure a "teen-friendly" PG-13 rating.  The short 83 minute running time implies that the movie was a doomed project almost from the start, and was heavily slashed in a vain attempt to save it.  Judging by the footage that did wind up on the screen, there was nothing really here worth saving.

The Lazarus Effect plays like the first draft of a script that accidentally went before the cameras before it was ready.  There are some ideas expressed, but they are never explored in any way.  Instead, we get a lot of scenes where the screen goes dark, then somebody pops up in front of the camera from out of the frame.  Even by the lowest standards of schlock horror, this stuff is pretty lame.

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