Movie Review--The Lazarus Effect

"I spent my whole life trying to make up for one mistake.  I did everything right.  And I still ended up in hell."

--Zoe, The Lazarus Effect

The type of movie that can be made on a very small budget without giving away its budgetary restraints if it is done right.  The Lazarus Effect does not ever look low budget, but it does not make the most of its cast, its premise, and the very weighty philosophical concepts it tries to tackle.  In more capable hands, what could have been a thoughtful exploration of consciousness, resurrection, the afterlife, and scientific experimentation on humans and animals would have avoided jumpscares, enhanced its characterization, and probably had one of its characters eventually realize how metaphysically false or epistemologically invalid many of the ideas asserted by the other characters are.  A longer runtime would have also been ideal for the subject matter and for deepening the characterization: The Lazarus Effect is not even 90 minutes long with credits!  When some of the small cast does not even get to have more than a few lines despite being in much of the movie, less than an hour and a half is not enough.

Production Values

Just a couple of truly great or thematically/cinematographically striking shots exist in the entire film, the best being when Zoe (Olivia Wilde) sits up on the experiment table after being resurrected.  Very telegraphed jumpscares and cliched events (doing what has been done before in cinema is not bas if it is carried out well, but the horror is not executed well here) from this point on spoil the promise that was built up.  Before and after her character's resurrection, Olivia Wilde has the central role in this story from seven years before her directorial debut with Don't Worry Darling.  However, she is wasted along with Evan Peters, Donald Glover, and the rest, some of whom have far superior roles in other horror entertainment, like Evan Peters with his early seasons of American Horror Story.  It is ironic in a happenstance prophetic sense that Donald Glover's character Niko is said to have made a "Millennium Falcon looking thing" when Glover went on to play Lando Calrissian in Solo less than five years later, though it is a shame to squander him in a role like that of Niko.  Suffering a worse fate in her characterization is Sarah Bolger.  She has little to do but react with her facial expressions and gestures.  This is, of course, the fault of the writing and plot rather than her fault as an actor, but what a waste the execution of almost everything is in this movie.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

At Berkeley University in California, a group of scientists test a serum that is intended to restore consciousness to the dead to extend the time that doctors can permanently resuscitate people without bringing about long-term mental or physical harm.  A dog used as a test subject comes back to life, though its bodily deformities have disappeared and neurological readings suggest abnormal activity in its nervous system.  Once the corporation funding the research is acquired by another company eager to take legal control of the serum, the team decides to reattempt the experiment with a new creature to provide evidence that they engineered this breakthrough substance, but a scientist named Zoe forgets to remove metal jewelry when handling immense amounts of electricity and is fatally shocked.  Her boyfriend next uses the serum on her out of desperation only for her to display telepathic and telekinetic abilities after her resurrection.

Intellectual Content

The "Lazarus" serum of the film, as is explained in the beginning, uses B-cell tumors to accelerate nerve fiber regrowth, with electrical charges activating the serum.  It is indeed logically posible for there to be a scientific way to resurrect someone despite the inherent metaphysical truth that consciousness and the body are not the same thing.  Either one brings the other into existence or something beyond them does.  Even on theism, God's mind still created and preserves matter and humanity, or at least started a chain of causality that led to them.  Both Zoe and her boyfriend, however, confuse consciousness for neurological phenomena that might or might not bring consciousness into existence or sustain it--this cannot be confirmed either way, though both are logically possible and consciousness and matter are metaphysically distinct either way, matter being nonphysical and matter being physical.  No one can grasp a thought or a perception, and sensory perceptions themselves do not necessarily even match with real physical stimuli (which cannot be proven to exist through the visual experiences most people take for granted as it is).  It is also logically possible for consciousness to exist without a physical shell, a conceptual truth that would not be possible if the mind is comprised of matter.  This does not mean that consciousness does or will exist independent of matter; it just means that the fact that consciousness, as opposed to metal or wood or a tree or any other physical thing, could hypothetically exist without matter.  The existence of consciousness is also absolutely certain when one avoids assumptions even if the external world was an illusion, for most sensory perceptions might be or could have been nothing but mental experiences connecting with no outside stimuli.

Aside from how every character in the movie ignores or misunderstands all of this, the Catholicism of Zoe is established through multiple scenes and was seemingly used to set up how Zoe went to what she thought was hell when she died, except that the hell she describes was reliving the worst day of one's life rather than anything having to directly do with just, temporary punishment for sin.  Catholicism is clearly not Biblical Christianity, just a legalistic, arbitrary set of traditions and assumptions, but even Catholic doctrine does not entail what The Lazarus Effect presents its hell as.  If hell was as Zoe describes, matching the worst day of a person's life, it would follow by necessity that someone whose worst day in existence was being viciously mistreated by others would be forced to experience anything from physical abuse to illicit discrimination to rape to the moments leading up to their murder; not only does the Bible never say this is what hell is like for anyone even as it gives sparse details about hell, but this would mean that hell could involve suffering from experiencing injustice over and over again, not suffering as a punishment for sin.  The contradiction of sin being a righteous, just punishment for sin is obvious, even if the other figures in this kind of hell might not be their own conscious, malicious beings at all, just figments of perception.  Of course, the hell of the Bible is not something humans inhabit forever either way, as they meet cosmic death of the soul (Matthew 10:28, Ezekiel 18:4) despite the realm itself existing perpetually (Matthew 18:8), created for "the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41) rather than the humans who bear God's image.

Conclusion

The Lazarus Effect does not live up to the potential its title suggests, and this much is clear after the first third of the film.  With philosophical aspects and a cast this strong, it is almost intentional when the rest of the movie becomes so needlessly predictable in its jumpscares and so tame with its horror imagery that neither the supernaturalism nor the science fiction is brought past superficial powers and the lights flickering on and off.  Embracing almost any of its elements in a rationalistic, artistically elevated way would have worked wonders for this movie, whether it was the scientific, phenomenological, or pseudo-religious parts that were leaned into (yes, consciousness is the soul, which is immaterial, making phenomenology pertain to supernaturalism; it is just that whether consciousness persists after biological death cannot be proven or disproven).  Leaning into little to nothing, though, is a certain way to damn a film to a status lower than it otherwise could have reached.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Blood leaks out from within a metal locker in a brief scene.  Actually, there is very little violence in the entire runtime.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit" is used repeatedly.