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| Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde |
Wes's Grade: D
Uninspired horror film "The Lazarus Effect" has little life in it
The silly new low-budget horror flick "The Lazarus Effect" is dead on arrival, and there's very little to bring it back to life. It does have an admittedly intriguing idea - of bringing things back to life - but it's so dull and uninspired there really isn't much to it. A team of ambitious medical professionals have found a way to bring dead patients back to life using a serum code-named "Lazarus". After several successful tests are done on animals, Zoe (Olivia Wilde), one of the lead researchers, dies in a lab accident. In desperation, the rest of the team, including her fiance (Mark Duplass), uses "Lazarus" to bring her back to life and they're successful. When she begins to display "unusual" abilities, the team realizes that their attempt to resurrect the dead may have opened the door to evil. Directed by David Gelb and co-written by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater, "The Lazarus Effect" is a stunningly boring, banal horror film that has very little going for it, though I liked its premise and in particular, its lead actress, the lovely Wilde, who is wasted here (and plus, she truly isn't evil enough, without giving too much of the plot away) along with the usually good Duplass, who is seen to better effect (no pun intended) on his HBO series "Togetherness." Plus, much of it is just plain dumb, without many genuine scares or creepiness, though I did find the resurrected dog watching Wilde sleep a tad chilling, but it's only for a few seconds of screen time. The dumb finale does have some energy to it, though it takes a long, long time to get there, and the minimal special effects seem to show up the movie's small budget. Some horror film enthusiasts might like "The Lazarus Effect," but for the rest of us, it's just best to skip.
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