Advances in medical science is the thing at the top of every
medical student’s “to-do” list and nothing is more important than discovering a
way to prolong death as the students in The
Lazarus Effect (2015) soon discovers.
Frank and Zoe (Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde, respectfully) are leading
a group of some of the most intelligent medical students in their pursuit of
prolonging or cheating death. When they
believe they are close they bring in Eva (Sarah Bolger) to help document
everything. After they bring a dog back
from the dead they realize they have made a real breakthrough but the
ramifications of what they have done eludes them. When an accident in the lab causes Zoe to die
they use everything they know to bring her back to life. The only problem is that Zoe isn’t the same
person that she was from before she died.
Having crossed to the Other Side has given Zoe supernatural abilities
and an uncontrollable rage that threatens each person of the team. Now Frank must decide what to do with his
wife before all of their lives are in jeopardy.
For fans of medical thrillers this starts off as a very well
done suspenseful film with a great cast to support the story. The film is written by Luke Dawson and Jeremy
Slater and does an excellent job setting up the film and all the characters and
their relationships with one another before everything gets out of hand. What unfortunately happens is that the last
third of the film turns into a slasher thriller destroying everything that came
before. The film also relies too much on
the CGI visual FX in the second half of the film as Zoe seems to exhibit
superhuman abilities akin to those of Scarlet Johansson’s character in Lucy (2014). Once this happens anything can and does
happen and the film falters from there never recovering.
This being said it is still entertaining and the cast does
the most with the film as it goes downhill but if they had just taken a little
more care this could’ve been a great film instead a mediocre one.
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