Zoe and Frank are in item, although her troubling dreams and his ambivalence towards marriage keep things rocky enough that faithful lab assistant Niko ( Donald Glover) keeps harboring a crush towards Zoe. What’s refreshing is that leads Zoe (Wilde) and Frank (Duplass) are likable and down-to-earth researchers who aren’t trying to break the chains of death so much as just give doctors more time to save patients who’ve passed beyond help. The screenplay by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater takes the typical Frankenstein scenario and gives it an initially interesting spin, with a more genial-than-usual group of ‘mad scientists’ playing God by using a serum to bring back dead animals. Early attempts by the cast to imbue the film with some nuance and energy are cut short once Gelb abandons his pseudo-science fiction for haunted house scare gags. If you spliced bits-and not necessarily the best ones-of Pet Semetary, Flatliners, Event Horizon and Hideaway together for some 88 minutes, and got Olivia Wilde and Mark Duplass to host them, there would be very little difference between that and Lazarus. David Gelb’s new film is so dependent on the classic standbys of the genre, and so slight in every other regard, that it immediately draws attention to just how creaky they’ve gotten over the years.Īn amiable and eye-catching cast of young up-and-comers highlights Lazarus, which plays less like an actual story and more like one of those horror clip shows that used to play on television back in the ‘80s. Oh, to return to that innocent moment in my life where the sight of a figure bolting upright beneath a covered sheet still filled me with fresh mortal dread, or a character bursting unexpected from the shadowy background forced an anxious glance over my shoulder. I came upon a bittersweet revelation while watching Olivia Wilde wreak paranormal havoc on her co-workers in The Lazarus Effect: the tried-and-true horror tropes no longer work for me.
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