The Lazarus Effect: Another unoriginal tale about deadish folks

Don’t expect The Lazarus Effect (rated PG-13 for intense sequences of horror violence, terror, and some sexual references) to square with Biblical eschatology. “Hell,” says the lone resurrected character in the movie, “is when you relive the worst moment of your life and you never wake up.” Kinda like watching yet another unoriginal tale about deadish folks.

Frank (Mark Duplass) and Zoe (Olivia Wilde) are researchers at a major California university. They have created a serum that, when injected along with electricity into a subject, revives them from death. A pig and a dog are the first beneficiaries of the Lazarus serum. Then Zoe is accidentally electrocuted in the lab. She lies dead on the floor for an hour because the panicking research team, recently expelled by the university for their controversial project, had snuck back into the lab to carry on their experiments. Instead of alerting the authorities, Frank and the lab assistants prop Zoe on the table and give her a dose and a zap. Success! She’s back, but she has changed … and she’s not in a glorified state. At times she appears to be normal, but when her eyes go black, she murders.

The Lazarus Effect rolls out a standard assemblage of sinister sights (snarling dogs, flickering lights, victims foolishly choosing a locker as a hiding place), but there are too many unbelievable events, even for a sci-fi movie. Whenever I realize I am in the same room with a zombie, I run out of the building, down the street, over the river, and through the woods. (Well, maybe not the woods.) But when Zoe starts squeezing skulls, the scientific geniuses never even attempt to leave the basement laboratory (in which nearly the entire film takes place). I’m also fairly sure female scientists, as a rule, don’t wear low-cut tank tops in the lab. Most fantastic, however, is that a university would shut down a scientific project because, as the dean said, it might offend religious people in the community.

I can suspend my disbelief only so much.