Review of The Lazarus Effect (2015) by Benskylerhill — 14 May 2018

The Lazarus Effect is a disappointing mess. It's disappointing because it has so much going for it. It attempts to ask deep philosophical questions about life and death but it just doesn't know where it wants to go with them.

The characters are all completely disposable with nothing significant about them individually. They are very lazily written into the film and it's hard to find reason to care about them. It's such a waste of a truly talented cast. The performances are as good as they can possibly be despite the script that's riddled with cliché after cliché after cliché. Jump scares abound and not a single one of them is unexpected.

That's not to say that all of the scares are ineffective, though. The Lazarus Effect makes impactful use of very creepy, original imagery that is genuinely unsettling. The lighting creates an atmosphere of tension that's unexpectedly powerful.

But aside from this, there's not much good to be said here. The movie spends a great deal of time trying to make sense of itself, and it does so in all the wrong ways. The dialogue is stuffed with scientific mumbo-jumbo in a attempt to convince us that the premise is actually logical and plausible. But while it sets all of that up, it forgets to set up compelling characters and, more importantly, fails to establish the rules for the supernatural world it creates. Once possession occurs and creepy things start happening, nothing makes sense anymore because nothing is developed. What are the demon's motives? What is this supernatural entity? Any message lying here is lost entirely in the mess that is the second and third acts.

The Lazarus Effect: high ambitions, low delivery. It's not scary and it can't make up for that because there really is nothing else it has to offer.

Story: 4.

Acting: 7.5.

Script: 2.5.

Visuals/Sound: 8.5.

Entertainment Value: 3.5.

OVERALL SCORE: 5.