The Lazarus Effect (2015) Directed by David Gelb
Sometimes I’ll see a trailer and think “hey, that looks promising” then said trailer completely leaves my mind, and I don’t think about it again. Then the movie shows up on Netflix and I’m like “oh yeah…that movie! It must have sucked if I never heard more about it.” This was the case with the Lazarus Effect. After a long day of watching the Lions choke, eating pizza and watching my wife and father in law can sauerkraut, I got home reassembled my bedroom after we painted it and almost forgot to watch a movie. I looked on Netflix, saw this and gave it a watch.
A group of medical researchers develop a serum called “Lazarus” and it is intended to assist coma patients but it can actually bring the dead back to life. Researchers Frank (Mark Duplass aka Pete from the League) and his fiancée Zoe (Olivia Wilde) along with their assistants Niko (Donald Glover the black guy from Community), Clay (Evan Peters the dopey friend from Never Back Down) and cameraperson Eva (Sarah Bolger) form the research team. They run a trial on an old dog that was recently put to sleep and it comes back to life. After a while they notice that the dog is acting differently than when it was alive. More remarkable things happen, such as the dog’s cataracts disappearing and it loses its appetite. The serum is discovered to actually build new synapses in the dog’s brain, rather than dissipating.
The dean of their university learns of the experiments and shuts down the project. They are informed that a big drug company has bought out the company that funded their research. The company and their lawyers confiscate everything associated with the project. Pete (actually Frank but I’m a league fan so he’s Pete) and his team sneak back into the lab and duplicate the experiment so that they can prove they created the serum. During the attempt, things go wrong and Zoe is electrocuted and killed. Pete freaks out and uses the serum to bring her back to life. Initially it appears to be successful, but the team soon realizes that Zoe isn’t quite right. She claims that when she died, she went to her version of hell, which was a nightmare originating from her childhood. The nightmare is being in an apartment building during a fire and she witnesses trapped neighbors burning to death. She also begins to show unusual psychic abilities. The serum causes the brain to evolve super fast and gives the person powers such as telekinesis and telepathy. While both of those are pretty cool the serum also causes increased aggression with horrifying consequences.
Niko walks into the room and is surprised by Zoe. She comes on to him and he refuses to kiss her, why? I don’t know, because Olivia Wilde is kind of cute. She becomes angered and uses her telekinesis to throw him into a locker and crushes it, thus killing Niko. When Clay demands to know where Niko is, she kills him by suffocating him with an e-cigarette, that’s a new one! Later Zoe kills Pete after he attempts to kill her with poison. Zoe then injects herself with an entire bag of Lazarus, making her basically super-powered. Her psychic abilities are full blown Mewtwo now I guess. She cuts the power to the lab and hunts Eva down. Eva is trying to find Zoe to inject her with poison in the dark. Zoe finds Eva and sends her to the hell she went to when she died. Eva is able to escape and inject Zoe with the needle, but Zoe survives and kills Eva anyway. Then Zoe injects Pete with her blood, loaded with Lazarus, in an attempt to bring him back to life, turning him into a monster as well.
Yawn, I kind of found myself slowly losing attention to this movie. I kept playing with my phone or my dog. The cast is great, and the acting is quite solid but the story drags on and is kind of boring. It has a decent plot and you think they could have had some really awesome scenes through out the movie, but they waited until the last 10 minutes to really do much of anything. This movie could have been much better with the plot and cast it had, but the middle dragged on too long for a 83 minute movie. I seriously felt like this was at least two hours. I wouldn’t really suggest this to anyone, unless you are super bored and have Netflix. I would give this movie a C-. I’m sorry I don’t have much to say, its just not a good movie and not bad enough to hate on.
