Number Rolled: 58
Movie Name/Year: The
Lazarus Effect (2015)
Tagline: Evil
will rise.
Genre: Horror
Length: 83
minutes
Rating: PG-13
Production Companies:
Blumhouse Productions, Chapter One Films, Lionsgate, Mosaic
Executive Producer:
Jeannette Brill, Luke Dawson
Director: David
Gelb
Writer: Luke
Dawson, Jeremy Slater
Actors: Mark
Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Sarah Bolger, Evan Peters, Donald Glover, Ray Wise,
Scott Sheldon, Emily Kelavos, James Earl, Amy Aquino, Sean T. Krishnan, Cato
Blurb from Netflix:
A team of researchers develops a serum that can resurrect the dead, but they
soon discover that the drug causes terrifying side effects.
Selina’s Point of View:
Well… this movie was just terrible.
When The Lazarus
Effect came out, I was so excited. It has an awesome cast and the trailer
really seemed great. Turns out the trailer was incredibly misleading and had
every single interesting part in it to begin with. The in-between moments
during the film were poorly written, involved depth-less characters and did not
live up to its horror genre.
I’m a huge American
Horror Story (2011-) fan, so I love Evan Peters (Adult World, The Good Doctor, Invasion). Equally, I was a huge House M.D. (2004-2012) fan and I have
enjoyed the work Olivia Wilde (Better
Living Through Chemistry, Drinking Buddies, Third Person) since. It almost
annoys me that this film is going to be such a bold black mark on their
credits. Neither of their characters were any more believable than any of the
others.
No, wait, that’s not completely true.
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time there was this ridiculously good and
short-lived TV show. I’m not talking about Firefly
(2002-2003), so fangirls/boys calm yourselves.
This TV show was called Reaper
(2007-2009).
I fell into fangasm with Reaper
immediately. It was quirky and hilarious with a thread of B-movie style horror,
but with a bigger budget and more of a comedic edge.
I won’t bore you with the specifics of the show, which is
unfortunately no longer on Netflix, but I will say that it left a lasting impression
on me. One that changed my headcanon for every single movie or TV show that starred
Ray Wise (Big Ass Spider, Jeepers
Creepers II, RoboCop).
In Reaper, Wise
played the devil and now, in my mind, his character is always the devil playing
a part. It really doesn’t help the situation that almost every project he takes
on places him as a character that’s causing some kind of chaos or committing
some kind of crime.
How does that apply to The
Lazarus Effect?
Well, Wise played one of those very under developed
characters I mentioned and, although he had roughly 30 seconds of on-screen
time, my mind still filled in the blanks with the idea that he was the devil
playing a part. What’s really interesting is that my headcanon made the entire
movie slightly more interesting for me.
In the end, I definitely do not recommend The Lazarus Effect. I do, however, recommend
you all go find a way to see Reaper.
Cat’s Point of View:
I’ve been interested in watching this movie since the
trailers for it aired on television. The premise looked really interesting.
It’s not the most original plot in the world – the whole animal and human
resurrection thing has been done before, after all. I figured it would be an interesting story at
the very least.
I have mixed emotions about this one.
On one hand I really liked it. On the other, I felt like I
was watching some sort of modernized version of Flatliners (1990) with a different twist.
I do believe that this was a pretty decent horror directorial
first-showing for David Gelb (A Vision of
Blindness, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, A Faster Horse) – considering his prior
work is primarily in documentaries.
I wasn’t entirely sold on Mark Duplass (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Zero Dark Thirty, Tammy) as Frank. He just
didn’t seem quite desperate enough when he should have been. On the other hand, Olivia Wilde (Turistas, Rush, Love The Coopers)
delivered an eerie performance.
I spent a little bit of this film, off and on, wondering
where in the world I’d seen Sarah Bolger (The
Spiderwick Chronicles, Crush, My All American) before. Quite a few might
recognize her from playing Princess Aurora on Once Upon A Time (2011-), or even the phenomenal new AMC show Into the Badlands (2015-) as Jade.
Her emotional delivery was on par with Olivia Wilde’s and
Evan Peters’ (Never Back Down, Kick-Ass,
Safelight); while the others seem to fall a bit flatter.
Speaking of Evan Peters… there’s an interesting bit of
trivia regarding one of his wardrobe pieces.
In one scene, he's wearing a t-shirt featuring DC's The Flash. This is
amusing, considering he played Marvel's speedster, Quicksilver, in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). While
that movie was released before this one, The
Lazarus Effect was actually filmed prior to X-Men - it was just significantly delayed in release.
I’m not sure I would shell out any money to purchase this
movie in any format, but that’s the wonderful thing about Netflix. As long as
it’s free, I’d be fine with watching again.
Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 13%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 23%
Netflix’s Prediction for Selina – 3/5
Selina’s Trust-the-Dice Score – 1.5/5
Netflix’s Prediction for Cat – 3.5/5
Cat’s Trust-the-Dice Score
– 3/5
Movie Trailer:
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