A heavyweight of the horror genre, a star-studded cast, and a curious premise packed with the potential for top-tier frights should be a match made in heaven, but 2015’s The Lazarus Effect proved to be hellish in all the wrong ways.
The only front on which the movie succeeded was commercially, with the low budget $3.3 million exercise in unrelenting supernatural terror recouping its modest budget 10 times over at the box office and then some, but director David Gelb’s half-baked effort was lacking on every other front.
A 15 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 23 percent user rating is nothing short of despicable, and calling it a disappointment would be putting it lightly given that we’re talking about a Blumhouse production headlined by Olivia Wilde that featured Mark Duplass, Donald Glover, Evan Peters, Sarah Bolger, and Ray Wise in supporting roles.
Wilde plays the fiancee of Duplass’ medical researcher, with their team having defied the laws of nature to find a method of reanimating the dead. Justifiably shut down for going against the grain of what constitutes acceptable science, things take a turn for the worse when the actress’ Zoe is killed… and you don’t have to think too hard to figure out what happens next.
Even though it was resoundingly panned by audiences and critics alike, The Lazarus Effect turned a hefty profit the first time around, and now it’s ironically risen again to haunt the streaming charts. As per FlixPatrol, the maligned misfire has become one of the top-viewed titles on Starz this weekend, with spooky season finding subscribers in a very forgiving mood if they’re willing to subject themselves to something so heinous.