Came back wrong
Feb. 15th, 2025 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowhiveMood went on downswing again last night (coupled with a bad headache) which means I’ll likely take awhile to get to answering things.
In an attempt to distract my brain I ended up watching The Lazarus Effect last night, so thoughts under the cut after the premise.
Scientists have found something that they think will bring people back to life, after test on a dog goes successfully an accident in the lab claims one of the scientists so they decide to use it on her….
So I was curious about this because a trailer came up on the recommended bit of my the tv, which is linked to Amazon prime which is where I watched it (and is something I need to make more use of). The premise is hardly original, but I was curious cause Evan Peters and Donald Glover were in the cast.
The cast list is pretty small, there’s the team of 4 scientists, a student that’s come to document their findings and then two more characters with one scene each, the dean of the university and a corporate executive (played by Ray Wise who is in the opening credits despite being in it for less than two minutes).
As you can probably guess, not least cause it’s a horror film, the scientist that’s bought back (Olivia Wilde better known from House) comes back wrong but we’ll get to that.
The first third of the film is set up about the team and the work they’re doing and it’s only then that they have a success, bringing a dog back to life. For a moment it seems like it might go into the territory of the dog has come back evil but it doesn’t really. Mostly it’s listless apart from one scene where he gets out his cage and another letter when he growls at Zoe (after she’s been bought back). (Sadly after that ‘Zoe’ kills the poor dog but at least it’s not shown so…)
Then those two one scene characters show up, the dean calling in the lead scientist (Zoe’s fiancé) and telling him the experiment is unethical and not what their grant was supposed to be then by the time he gets back to the lab the executive has came in and taken the research. (It’s unclear if it’s to exploit the research or to bury it as he’s from a biotech firm, so it could go either way.)
They then decide to sneak into the lab so they can record their experiment happening again but then Zoe get electrocuted. And her fiancé basically convinces the others to bring her back, despite the process only working once. This happens almost two thirds into the film.
Of course she’s come back ‘wrong’ it’s pretty clear she’s been possessed but it doesn’t solidly say so (there’s the alternative explanation that the process has activated more of her brain). But either way she ends up killing her colleagues. Within the span of ten minutes three of the team are dead then there’s a final girl type showdown with the last one, which seems to beats her only then turns out to be a trick.
The last scene has ‘Zoe’ doing the process that bought her back to her colleagues which would have been an interesting thing to follow up on.
But anyway, I thought it was good overall. It made good use of the lab set (which was where 80% of the film was) and the performances were mostly good. Evan and Donald were my favs but of course they both died first (well after Zoe anyway). The lead scientist was the only one of the team that was a bit bleh. If anything the last third did feel a bit rushed, like it took most of the film to get to that point of Zoe coming back and, like I said, it speedrun through the killings.
Also there was a bit where they thought someone informed the dean as to what was going on, but instead of really leaning into it there was only really one scene of suspicion (to the newbie of course) and then mention of spyware in the system that was there for months. (And of course what were the biotech team gonna do with the research? And the last scene had potential?)
Bu5 it worked for what it was and served as a decent enough distraction.
Todays plan is fortnite, maybe read ABC murders sone more, the masked singer final and then…. I dunno.
In an attempt to distract my brain I ended up watching The Lazarus Effect last night, so thoughts under the cut after the premise.
Scientists have found something that they think will bring people back to life, after test on a dog goes successfully an accident in the lab claims one of the scientists so they decide to use it on her….
So I was curious about this because a trailer came up on the recommended bit of my the tv, which is linked to Amazon prime which is where I watched it (and is something I need to make more use of). The premise is hardly original, but I was curious cause Evan Peters and Donald Glover were in the cast.
The cast list is pretty small, there’s the team of 4 scientists, a student that’s come to document their findings and then two more characters with one scene each, the dean of the university and a corporate executive (played by Ray Wise who is in the opening credits despite being in it for less than two minutes).
As you can probably guess, not least cause it’s a horror film, the scientist that’s bought back (Olivia Wilde better known from House) comes back wrong but we’ll get to that.
The first third of the film is set up about the team and the work they’re doing and it’s only then that they have a success, bringing a dog back to life. For a moment it seems like it might go into the territory of the dog has come back evil but it doesn’t really. Mostly it’s listless apart from one scene where he gets out his cage and another letter when he growls at Zoe (after she’s been bought back). (Sadly after that ‘Zoe’ kills the poor dog but at least it’s not shown so…)
Then those two one scene characters show up, the dean calling in the lead scientist (Zoe’s fiancé) and telling him the experiment is unethical and not what their grant was supposed to be then by the time he gets back to the lab the executive has came in and taken the research. (It’s unclear if it’s to exploit the research or to bury it as he’s from a biotech firm, so it could go either way.)
They then decide to sneak into the lab so they can record their experiment happening again but then Zoe get electrocuted. And her fiancé basically convinces the others to bring her back, despite the process only working once. This happens almost two thirds into the film.
Of course she’s come back ‘wrong’ it’s pretty clear she’s been possessed but it doesn’t solidly say so (there’s the alternative explanation that the process has activated more of her brain). But either way she ends up killing her colleagues. Within the span of ten minutes three of the team are dead then there’s a final girl type showdown with the last one, which seems to beats her only then turns out to be a trick.
The last scene has ‘Zoe’ doing the process that bought her back to her colleagues which would have been an interesting thing to follow up on.
But anyway, I thought it was good overall. It made good use of the lab set (which was where 80% of the film was) and the performances were mostly good. Evan and Donald were my favs but of course they both died first (well after Zoe anyway). The lead scientist was the only one of the team that was a bit bleh. If anything the last third did feel a bit rushed, like it took most of the film to get to that point of Zoe coming back and, like I said, it speedrun through the killings.
Also there was a bit where they thought someone informed the dean as to what was going on, but instead of really leaning into it there was only really one scene of suspicion (to the newbie of course) and then mention of spyware in the system that was there for months. (And of course what were the biotech team gonna do with the research? And the last scene had potential?)
Bu5 it worked for what it was and served as a decent enough distraction.
Todays plan is fortnite, maybe read ABC murders sone more, the masked singer final and then…. I dunno.
