Scientists discovered a way to make a baby the biological child of three parents. We can grow human organs and make artificial hearts. It seems it’s only a matter of time before we’re cloning humans and maybe, as David Gelb’s “The Lazarus Effect” suggests, even raising the dead.
Though it might seem a worthwhile feat of science, mortality is one of the key traits of humanity. When someone is immortal in fantasy or horror films, the person seems no longer fully human and more like a god or a monster. In the monotheistic, Judeo-Christian world of the modern United States, whoever can spark the dead back to life would be a god. This is evident in the film’s title, a reference to the Biblical Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead.
However, religious faith seems to grow less and less popular in a country with access to state-of-the-art scientific research. It seems science is a more powerful force than God, or at least that’s how Frank (Mark Duplass), a researcher attempting to create a reanimating serum, sees it. His fiancée and research partner, Zoe (Olivia Wilde), disagrees. She is quietly devout, wearing a small, gold cross around her neck at all times. When Frank dismisses visions of angels and white light reported by survivors of near-death experiences as hormone-induced hallucinations, Zoe counters with her theory: the visions are helping the soul move onto its next destination, like a doorman guiding the soul to heaven or hell.
Visions of doors are a motif in Zoe’s recurring nightmare — a traumatic memory from childhood in which her neighbors died in an apartment building fire, trapped behind a locked door. She tries not to let this, nor her fiancé’s irritating habit of putting his work before their relationship, affect her own work. It pays off. The research team, also including Clay (Evan Peters), a vaping dude-bro with occasionally good scientific input, Niko (Donald Glover), who’s hopelessly in love with Zoe, and newcomer Eva (Sarah Bolger), who films the experiments, soon develops a version of the serum that brings a dead dog back to life.
But the dog is acting strangely, and to top it all off, it turns out the experiment was unauthorized — a fact Frank forgot to mention. As a result, an independent pharmaceutical company, coming across not quite as formidable as the film would probably like, confiscates everyone’s research. Except, conveniently, exactly enough serum to repeat the experiment on camera, so the team can patent their serum. They sneak into the lab, but the experiment goes awry and Zoe is electrocuted. Luckily, there’s still a good amount of serum left. They bring her back to life, and science conquers God.
Until, of course, they begin to realize Zoe is possessed by something science cannot explain. She can suddenly hear everyone’s thoughts, predict what they’ll say before they say it, move objects telekinetically and even bring other people into her dreams.
“Lazarus” boasts a plethora of horror film tropes: Frankenstein experiments, demon possession, creepy little girls in long hallways, virgins never dying but the black guy dying first. To match this, a frenetic pace and over-the-top scares might have made this a fun flick. Sadly, however, none of its many faces seem to point in the right direction. “Lazarus” doesn’t know what kind of horror film it wants to be, and so it becomes a mediocre one.
The film is slow, despite its unusually short running time (83 minutes). All the talk of heaven and hell, gods and monsters is far too deep for this PG-13 horror release. It makes the film seem even slower, and though there are a few satisfactory jump-scares, even they become predictable.
As a demon, Wilde looks like she’s having fun but isn’t very scary. Zoe is far more interesting as a scientist struggling with religion and a less-than-deserving jerk of a fiancé — a role Duplass, in a more straight-faced version of his role on “The Mindy Project,” plays perfectly.
Peters comes off as heavy-handed and obnoxious, although the blame may lie in awkward writing. Glover’s subtle “nice guy” performance is commendable, but the real standout of “Lazarus” is relative unknown, Bolger. As the outsider, she is the audience stand-in, alluded to in her role as the team’s videographer. After Zoe’s death and reanimation, Eva becomes the scream-queen star of the show. But her performance, even among a collection of decent performances and a decent plot, is overall not enough to raise “Lazarus” from the dead.
