SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ACTUALLY WANT TO WATCH THIS MOVIE, A DECISION THAT I HIGHLY DISAGREE WITH
Comprised of an all-star cast including Olivia Wilde, Evan Peters, Donald Glover, and Mark Duplass, The Lazarus Effect manages to make even less sense than Memento, if that's even possible. You'd think that with a great cast of talented actors like that, they'd have a good script for them to utilize. LOL WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, THE 70'S? KIDS DON'T CARE ABOUT GOOD SCRIPTS AND WRITING YOUR STORY WELL! THEY JUST WANNA BE JUMPSCARED EVERY TWO SECONDS! THAT'S THE TRUE ESSENCE OF HORROR!
OH MAN GUYS HER SKINS BURNING IN THE FIRE SPOOKY RIGHT?! RIGHT?!
You can tell that the actors are really trying to do a good job in this, but everything about this movie is just so chaotic and nonsensical that they can't seem to get a grip on the situation long enough to make it work. I guess I should talk about the plot now, right? Cool, let's get this over with.
Here's how this movie works: Olivia Wilde is married to Mark Duplass. They're both scientists working in a lab and trying to invent a serum that can bring the dead back to life. Okay, two things: 1. Why? and 2. Have you learned nothing from Re-Animator? Those type of things are never good. Actually, this movie could learn a lot from Re-Animator, for one, HOW TO BE A GOOD MOVIE. I ask why they're inventing this reanimation serum because it's literally never explained. They're just doing it right from the start without any explanation, which is a trend you'll start to see in this movie. It's so convoluted that it doesn't even try to properly explain itself. Everything is just brushed off and you have to take it as it is. "Use your imagination you idiots. I don't have to explain my art." - the director, probably.
"HELP I DON'T BELONG HERE! I'M A GOOD ACTRESS!"
Alrighty, Mark and Olivia are joined by the sometimes comedic, sometimes serious duo of lobster boy from American Horror Story and black dude from Community.By the way, I'm not calling any of these characters by their in-movie names because they're literally the most forgettable characters ever. The thing about using well-known actors and actresses and giving them bad scripts is that if they have no structured characters to make their own, they just look like their actor selves trying to be something they're not and it's highly distracting. Anyway, they make the raise the dead serum and they test it on a dog and it works. The dog is back and kicking, but only for a few weeks before it start to experience violent mood swings. This also results in one of the most hilariously stupid scenes I've ever seen: one where Olivia Wilde is asleep in her bed and the dog just comes into her room and stands on the bed, staring at her.
He's just standing there......MENACINGLY!
Okay, so the government finds out that they've been experimenting with dead bodies and junk and apparently they weren't supposed to be doing that, so the government comes in and shuts everything down. This is where the movie takes a turn for the worst. They literally break into the government facility heist-style and try to get their equipment back. During this time, Olivia Wilde is electrocuted and dies. Mark Duplass obviously loves his wife unconditionally and would still love her even as a zombie, so he shoots her up with the serum. It works and Olivia is back, but not the same as she was before. She keeps talking about going to hell and she begins to act violently, just like the dog. And here's the kicker. Are you ready for this? No, I'm really gonna need you to sit down for this. SHE DEVELOPS PSYCHIC POWERS. WE'VE GOT A MOVIE ABOUT A FREAKING PSYCHIC ZOMBIE HERE. I sincerely wish that I was kidding when I say that. If that sounds ridiculous and stupid, then congraduration a winner is you, you're completely right, it is. Here's a fun fact for you: THEY NEVER ONCE EXPLAIN HOW SHE STARTS DEVELOPING THESE PSYCHIC POWERS OR WHY THE DOG DIDN'T GET THEM TOO. NOT ONCE. THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND YOUR MOVIE IS LEFT UNEXPLAINED. THAT IS NOT OKAY.
So Olivia Wilde begins to use her psychic powers to go completely insane and start killing everything in sight. This leads to some of the silliest, most unnecessary deaths I've ever seen. She pushes Donald Glover into a locker and picks it up and crushes it with her mind and, get ready, Evan Peters? That guy who's been smoking an e-cigarette for the whole movie? Well sonny boy have we got an ironic death for you! He's looking at Olivia Wilde's now completely black demon eyes and she goes nuts and makes his e-cig shoot at his face and go down his throat, causing him to choke on it. DEATH BY VAPE. I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THE DAY.
So Olivia Wilde ends up killing everybody by the end of the movie. The climax of the movie is her chasing the last person alive through the lab while the lights keep flickering on and off because ooooohhhh spooky lights. We also see flashbacks in her head throughout the whole movie about her being in a burning hallway with a little girl and people pounding on a door at the end of it, seemingly burning to death. This is also never explained in the movie. From what I gather, that little girl was Olivia Wilde as a kid or something freaking stupid like that. Now, this whole chase sequence COULD have been an effective scene. HOWEVER, the movie royally screws over any chance it had of this being scary by BLARING OPERA MUSIC DURING THE ENTIRE THING. It's not even creepy opera music either. It's like happy, classical kinda opera. This is because Olivia Wilde's character really likes opera music. You could tell because she was listening to it on vinyl earlier in the movie. So now, when she's chasing this girl and trying to kill her, she decides to turn it up to full blast. You know, for scary effect!
SHH if we hide in here long enough, maybe the director will hire someone else to do this!
Are we almost done? Actually yes. Olivia Wilde succeeds in killing everyone on the map without dying and with her shiny new Perfection medal in hand, she takes Mark Duplass' body and pumps it full of the serum, hopefully making an army of psychic zombies to overtake the world with. And that's it. You got the bad ending. Would you like to reload your save from before the final boss to see the good ending?
Alright, this movie was bad. Like REALLY REALLY bad. Granted, I say that for a lot of movies, but this one legitimately made my hope for modern horror dwindle to almost non-existent levels. If this is the kind of schlock that can get a theatrical release while good movies are left to rot in straight to video hell, then I have no faith in this genre surviving long in theaters. Now, I'm not saying that horror movies are going to die out anytime soon, far from that actually. Horror movies are going to thrive as long as people want to see them and over the past few years, people have made it very clear that they're willing to pay money to see crap like this in theaters. These kind of jumpscare-riddled, incoherent, garbage movies will continue to get 15%s on RottenTomatoes but people will still go see them because why not? It pisses me off that this is what horror has become. Everytime a horror movie comes into theaters, you automatically think to yourself "that's probably gonna suck" because we've had such a bad track record with horror movies lately that it's been burned into your brain that horror in theaters = awful. And you know the worst part? That thought is completely correct most of the time. This movie is everything that's wrong with modern horror and I hate it with every inch of my being. This movie holds a special place in my heart as being my least favorite movie of all time at this point. It might not stay like that for long, though. If this is the rate that bad horror movies comes out, I'll probably have another one in that spot by next year. It just makes me so sad to see what my favorite movie genre has become. It's mutated in the worst possible way. It's really quite depressing. Anyway, don't watch this movie. In fact, make a conscious effort to never speak of this atrocity ever again. I give The Lazarus Effect 0 psychic zombies out of 10. It's seriously the worst thing I've ever seen and it makes me sad for the world of cinema.
If only Olivia Wilde would look at me like that when she's NOT a crazy psychic zombie
