It’s lazy filmmaking. While the characters spend most of the film trapped in an underground lab, there’s never a sense of urgency or even claustrophobia. Perhaps it’s because we never get a good idea of what this place looks like, or maybe it’s because this is a comically enormous lab for a team that consists of four scientists and a student videographer. A whip pan and a musical sting is not suspense. The scares to be had in this film are entirely of the jump variety. Horror films don’t need to terrify to be successful, but a good scare can go a long way towards drowning out a film’s stupidity. Let’s start with the cardinal sin: this film is not scary. It’s a $5 million horror film that takes place almost entirely in one location. There’s definitely a sense of economy at play here, but the film’s problems have nothing to do with its budget.Īs far as sci-fi horror goes, The Lazarus Effect faceplants hard on both the science and the horror. Although, credit where credit is due, Blum also produced last year’s excellent Oscar dark horse Whiplash, and the HBO gay rights film The Normal Heart, so there’s a hope he’s branching out. But The Lazarus Effect is right in his wheelhouse. With films like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and The Purge on his resume, producer Jason Blum is proving himself to be the modern day Roger Corman, albeit with a slightly more mainstream sensibility. The Lazarus Effect is the latest from the Blumhouse factory of low budget horror films. Unfortunately, what comes back isn’t exactly Zoe. And that’s when things really begin to fall apart. After four years of failure, the team manages to bring a dog back from the dead, although the franken-dog soon starts exhibiting strange and aggressive behavior. Just when animal trials begin to show some success, a shadowy corporation yanks their funding and steals their research. Desperate for something to show for their work, they break back into their lab and attempt to replicate the experiment, leading to a freak accident that kills Zoe. Thankfully, they work in a lab that specializes in bringing people back to life. ( Science Goes to the Movies is made possible by generous support from the Alfred P.Mark Duplass ( Safety Not Guaranteed) and Olivia Wilde ( Tron: Legacy) star as Frank and Zoe, two medical PhDs heading up a small team of researchers working to bring people back from the dead using the aptly named “Lazarus Serum” and our good old reanimating friend: electricity. Fear of what science can do is discussed as both coming from films and resulting in them. Contrasted with Hollywood’s tendency to make science scary, the hosts and guest agree, is the actually frightening science of climate change that is often ignored.įor Kingsman: The Secret Service, the co-hosts and Tyson consider the neuroscience of aggression and how it might be artificially stimulated without also triggering other reduced-inhibition behaviors.ĭistinctions between the lives of actual scientists and those depicted by Hollywood are described Tyson shares his view that film and television have evolved from diabolical to more human portrayals. The Lazarus Effect leads to a consideration of popular depictions of the mad, diabolical scientist – who attempts to play God and pays the price, beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – and the changing ways death has been defined through history and the real scientific implications of reanimating the dead. Science Goes to the Movies Episode #103: The Lazarus Effect & Kingsman: The Secret Service from CUNY TV on Vimeo. Heather Berlin speak with renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson – Director of The American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium – to discuss how Hollywood depicts scientists, particularly in current movies The Lazarus Effect and Kingsman: The Secret Service, and also 1954’s Them!, a horror film about giant mutant ants. Curious about pop-culture’s representation of the mad-scientist, attempting to play God and paying the price? In this episode of Science Goes to the Movies (presented by ), Co-hosts Faith Salie and Dr.
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