Lazarus Effect Trailer

Skip to 2 min mark if you are impatient

Looks intresting.

I am guessing a touch predictable, and the direction looks a little weak but who knows. Oliva Wilde is one of the actresses who for a couple of years hollywood was trying to push-and is very talented-but never quite found the right thing-but i could see her as a demonic monster- i suspect when you say cut to 2 minute mark you could do the same thing in the movie to around 80 but it could be a fun little horror movie if it gets the right atmosphere.

Castor .

Well .....

I do like the idea of it as a business-its a low budget indie movie that takes advantage of a very good cast some intresting special effects to make a kind of Superwoman movie-a horror movie but something.

One of the things i didn't know until recently is this directed by David Gleb the director of Jiro Dreams of Sushi the award winning documentary about a master Sushi Cheif-its an intresting documentary that takes a most of a story of a man mastering his craft. . I Don't think i liked it as much as others but sure This is his first go at a fictional film. And perhaps becuse of jiro there is a great cast in.

it stars one of the Duplass brothers who started a decade creating the mumblecore movement with Puffy Chair and have for last couple of years been devoloping intresting ways to take there aschetic into genre pictures like Baghead(a kind of neat slasher film) Black Rock( a Women in trouble thriller that i can recomend). Its go Donald Glover who is the thought full actor of shows like Comunity and Girls who a lot of people say is in the running for Spiderman(not a bad choice). and yes Its Stars Oliva Wilde who is a gorgious actress, who also can be a pretty good straight comic presence.

I think the idea of these kinds of people working on a more traditional horror movie of superpowered but evil frame is intresting-this isn't that diffrent then say conceptually the stuff that Jess P produces. I like the idea of it in theroy at least.

But i have used the word theroy a bit much haven't i?

The movie is basically a kind of retelling of Frankensiten with Duplass and Wilde as Married Grad students working on bring the dead back to life-it works-until Wilde Gets killed in a freak Electution-which necessitates bring her back...which isn't a good idea. Maybe shes come back as a demon-maybe shes just gone back to really bad places of her subconcious.....

And it does lead(faster then i suspected) to some intresting uses of demonic like powers- a lot of telekensis and some good old fashioned superstrength-none of the effects are badly done. In particular it plays a lot with the kind of mind powers...but well its never thats scary.

The editing is werid, the Script isn't great and Duplass in particulars character switches around a lot for who i think is suposed to be our hero. It tries to hard i think to seem scary..there is a lot of jump bits that never really sucseeds. It feels a bit clumsy. Say what you will about Parinomial Activity-its good at pacing. This one ehhh...

The key to Frankiensten in most adoptations is the Monster is the Misunderstood tragic hero. You want to see him sucseed-in some versions find the humanity hes lost Not here. Wilde is a likable actress-but i think the movies main problem is that she(or the script or the director) never really does a good job of giving us reason to care if she lives or dies. Shes kind of a pretty blank slate before the accident, and the movie never seems that concerned with asking if she can get back there.So when shes turns into the monster its all pretty much you can do is kill it.

(this is one of the big weeknesses of the Parinomal Activity template-you never really care much about the characters. If you told me that this was originally a better script that the producers forced a bit into that mold i would belive you)

It does look intresting taking advantage of digitial cameras abilty to look spooky in certain light. I like the production design which is all a lab as a scary spooky space. There is a kind of intresting ideas of where science and religion meet and its idea of hell as the thing we create out of memories of our worst days is an effective section. Donald Glover does okay work as a guy who is a little quicker to realize whats going on then people around him, as does Sarah Boldger as the kind of everywoman character-these are talented people working on ocasionally sucseeding at something, that maybe with a script that did more could have better

I can't honestly say i hate it- i think there are people in this group who may like it (This feels at times like a bigger Budget Jess movie but without the witt[and not that bigger a budget)] I don't think i am one of them, but i can't fault people who do. This maybe a decent movie to rent as they say- but well yeah.

Actually the one person who i would really recomend this movie to is Jess. I think if she was given this script she would have a lot more fun with i. At times with the jump scares and scary dogs(yes there scary dogs) there seems to want to have fun bits. Which is perhaps the movies really big problem-its never fun.