The Lazarus Effect: Movie Review

Even with a run time of only 83 minutes, sitting through the new horror film “The Lazarus Effect” couldn’t go by quick enough. I am a horror fan and I had some hope for this one just because it seemed to draw a great cast that includes Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Evan Peters and Donald Glover. Unfortunately there is nothing scary here and it can’t even pass as mildly entertaining. What a waste of on-screen talent.

Frank (Duplass), Zoe (Wilde), Niko (Glover), and Clay (Peters) are researchers working on a serum that would bring living things (animals, people) back to life. First they test it on a dog and it seemed to work, even though the four legged friend seemed to be having some personality issues.

When the team’s formula is suddenly taken away from them by a pharmaceutical company that owns the rights to their research, they decide to break into the lab and run the experiment again to prove it was theirs. Eva (Sarah Bolger) is on hand to document everything with her camera. Things go terribly wrong when Zoe is electrocuted and Frank (who also happens to be her fiancée) decides to run the experiment on her. We all know that nothing good can come out of this. When was the last time you saw a horror movie where someone was brought back from the dead and everything was honky-dory?

Zoe is now using 100% of her brain which allows her to read peoples thoughts and control objects with her mind. Oh, and let me not forget to point out that she has become completely evil. We get a handful of jump-scares minus the scares and we get some not-so-creative kills.

“The Lazarus Effect” is really bad, but because it is a well-marketed horror film, it will most likely make a tidy profit during its’ opening weekend, but like most recent horror flicks, world of mouth will cause it to drop off quickly.

By: Marc Ferman