Yea, I know, I'm a few reviews behind for the month. No big deal, I'll make them up like I made up my labs back in college. All at once! But for now, just one review, because I have a headache.
The Lazarus Effect (2015) or just "Lazarus" as they refer to it on NetFlix (where I saw it) is a movie about resurrection. Not Jesus, or Lazarus, but a dog. At least, at first. A team of college (I think it was college) researchers are looking into ways of extending the time a human can be left deceased before being reanimated, so that doctors can repair the damage done to the body. After a potential breakthrough, they hire a camera operator to go ahead and record the experiment for posterity. Success! They successfully resurrect a dog that had been dead for some time. The dog seems completely healthy (which is odd, because it was dead) and they take it home to keep an eye on it. The next day, the dog is acting strangely aggressive. While the team of researchers is deciding what to do, their lab is shut down by the college review board, and all their research is repossessed by some parent company. Frustrated and angry, the team knows that their discovery is about to be snatched away by some huge corporation. The only way to protect themselves is to properly document the experiment, but all their records have been taken. To document the experiment, they have to sneak back into the laboratory, and repeat their success, only this time... Yea. All hell breaks loose.
This was kind of a short movie at only an hour and 15 minutes long (excluding the credits), but not entirely un-enjoyable. There's little lead-in and no character development, and only a tiny smidgen of back-story. Maybe a lot of the back story was edited out as being unimportant (if you're feeling generous), or maybe it was never filmed, because there's a few minor plot-holes floating around like stale doughnut holes left in an old box in the break room. I don't think any of what I'm about to tell you counts as a spoiler, but let's start with just what I have in the plot summary, above.
First, I'm not sure a college laboratory has to satisfy a review board every few months to keep their grant, if indeed, it was a college lab. Two, if it was a college lab, why did everything revert back to some corporation? Wouldn't ownership revert back to the college? Three, the whole evil corporation coming in and taking everything had huge potential, but was totally unexplored, and seemed only to give the characters a reason to go back and film the experiment a second time. They even had an awesome actor come in to give the whole evil corporation a face (I think it was an awesome actor, because i recognized his face as being familiar, but I forget who it was). And that's just about the corporation.
Couple of other plot holes exist in the fact that, why the hell don't they bother to ground an electrical switch? Seriously, wtf? Two, would wearing a ring really cause that much of a problem? Granted it's 11,000 volts, but it's the amperage that kills you, not the voltage, and any electrician will tell you that. And then, there's the damn dog. First the dog acts all freakin weird, and you're wondering wtf is up, and then, when you expect the dog to be all happy, it's not. And that's odd, because you'd think it would be, in that particular instance, and if you see the movie, you'll understand what I mean. And one final question, what exactly happened to the dog? I mean, honestly? I know it's sort of implied, but it's a lab. There's only so many places to hide the body of a large dog, you know?
Three, and here's something I don't get (minor plot spoiler here), but they actually bring up the fact that the release of DMT (have no idea what that stands for but supposedly it's highly hallucinogenic) apparently opens the portal and ushers your soul on to the afterlife when you die. So then they say, maybe (um, so-and-so, so I don't give away too much of the plot) is actually stuck because the portal never opened, when the alternative would probably be more true and OH-so much scarier... That the portal is open, and stuck that way. Yea. That would make my juevos crawl back up inside me and hide, let me tell you. But no, they say the portal never opened, which makes absolutely no freaking sense, given what was happening around them at the time. Just made me look at the screen like the characters were confused morons, which, may not be unusual for a horror flick, but these are supposed to be scientists. Meh, bad writing, I guess. End Spoilers.
So Olivia Wilde is in it, and there's no nude scenes that I recall, much as I would have enjoyed one from Ms. Wilde, but meh. The movie sort of sucked, acting wasn't that great, but at least it was short and sweet and to the point of attempting to scare the bejeesus out of you as quickly as possible. No real suspense here, nor atmosphere, but more of an action-horror piece. No creepy horror, multiple attempts at jump scares that failed because, well, you pretty much knew they were coming. Special effects were pretty decent, at least, for the few times they were actually required. Maybe watch it once for the kooky plot, and to see if you can figure out a way to plug all the plot holes? Nothing terribly new here, that's for sure. If you miss it, you aren't really missing anything terribly exciting, or original.
Okay, that's all for this evening. I'm going to try and catch up over the next few days. Supposed to be almost at #20 by now, and I'm only at review #16. Sigh. Hard to find good stuff to watch, too. Til next time!
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