The Lazarus Effect (2015)

JohnnyTwoToes trashes this insipid thriller that tries hard to blend Flatliners with Pet Sematary and fails!

In 1990, Joel Schumacher directed a film called Flatliners with starred Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt and William Baldwin as med students who decide to explore the near death experience. They would slow the heart down of a subject (themselves, actually), somehow record what the brain sees and record what their body does while in this state. Afterwards, they are revived and talk about what they saw and felt. It was a remarkable film and did a good job of probing the psyche of each of the students. It really explored each of their own demons and how traumatic events shaped their lives to make them the way they are now. Flatliners was a sharply observant and intelligent film. The Lazarus Effect tries to be Flatliners but, unfortunately with its horror and supernatural undertones, cannot make up its mind what it wants to be. 

The Lazarus Effect refers to the Biblical figure of Lazarus who was brought back from the dead. In the film, a group of medical students led by Frank (Mark Duplass) have seemingly found a way to bring back the dead. This film also stars Sarah Bolger, Evan Peters, Donald Glover and Olivia Wilde as Zoe, Frank’s girlfriend and fellow student. When an accident kills Zoe, they use their new found technology to bring her back with limited success. She is still Zoe……..or is she something else. Since the students are not even supposed to be in the facility they are using they are now at the mercy of whatever Zoe has returned as. She ain’t the old Zoe, that is for darn sure. 

I did not have any problems with the premise and kind of knew what to expect. But The Lazarus Effect seems bent on being a horror film. The problem is that it is not scary. We get lots of jump scares but no sense of real terror. So does it try to be a deep film about life and death and how it affects us? No. The acting is decent enough and I especially like Sarah Bolger and Olivia Wilde’s interaction together, but the film is in such a hurry to give us another jump scare that it never develops any of the characters. They are simply used as plot devices that are to be eliminated one at a time. 

The Lazarus Effect is rated PG13 and is only 83 minutes long yet, it goes absolutely nowhere. Instead, what the viewer gets is a film that is not scary enough to be a horror film and not smart enough to be a psychological thriller. Everything seems to be hampered by its rating and run time. The characters have apparently never have seen a horror film either, since they decide to go off on their own, one by one. These are med students and to be in med school means you have to be a smart person. But, in this case these characters are only as smart as the action of the film dictates. The characters so underwritten and uninspired that I never believed any of them were in into med school. I did not buy a minute of this film, have any vested interest in these characters or see this film as anything other than a sloppy and unfocused mess. 

Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater’s script is nonsensical and never gets into the brain of any of these characters.Slater (who is credited as one of the writers for this summer’s atrocity Fantastic Four) and Dawson (writer of the B-titled horror film Shutter) have only written these characters as one dimensional so there is no emotional hook in any of them. First time director David Gelb lets the pacing of The Lazarus Effect sputter along and although this is a short film, it seems longer than it is. It is basically the same scene over and over. The characters talk and yell at each other and then there is a jump scare. Then, more talking and yelling and another jump scare; maybe a quick shot Zoe tilting her head in an ominous way. It takes mere minutes for the viewers to figure out that Zoe is evil, but the smart med students don’t catch on until the whole place is locked down. By then it is too late for them and for the viewers 

The Lazarus Effect has a great idea, the acting is sufficient and I liked the score by Sarah Schachner, but it is so ineptly handled that it becomes a burden to get through. I almost turned it off a couple of times just to take a break from the banality of it all. It was still a chore to get through. Save your money and watch (or re-watch) Flatliners a ten times better film or Stephen King's Pet Sematary. The Lazarus Effect-*1/2 out of 5