By Melissa Antoinette Garza
This movie is not one to see because it’s unique, interesting or scary. It is only worth seeing to view what great actors can do with a mediocre script and at times painful dialogue.
The film begins with a pair of scientists and a few students practicing a new medical procedure on a dog they put down. Their experiment works and the dog comes back to life. Only there are some side-effects. The serum used was not supposed to remain in the system, but the MRI showed it wasn’t dissipating at all. Also, when resurrected the dog no longer had Cateracts and suddenly was aggressive.
The lab gets sold and the head of the experiment Frank (Mark Duplass) and his scientist wife Zoe (Olivia Wilde) convince the students to sneak back into the lab one last time so that they can redo the procedure and keep big Pharma from stealing their idea and patenting it.
Something goes terribly wrong, Zoe is electrocuted and Frank blames himself. He convinces the rest of the crew to bring Zoe back to life but as one can imagine she is far from the same. She is overtaken by a memory of when she was a child in a burning apartment building unable to allow the other tenants out. She blames herself and believes she went to hell after death. When awake, she can move things with her mind, predict what others are going to say before saying it and when her eyes go black, she becomes an evil killing monster.
There are several issues with this movie. First, it’s predictable and it’s been done a thousand times before. It irritates me that this film went to the theater while the original and captivating 2B: The Era of Flesh is Over (2009) is only available via its website. Seriously, watch that movie! It’s an amazing production about creating life which surpasses this one in every way as it takes the opposing view where science is actually a GOOD thing rather than it causing a disastrous killing machine.
That said, this is just another story about man playing God and losing. Still, the acting was fantastic. One can’t go wrong with Mark Duplass. I would definitely suggest Creep (2014) over this but Duplass does well portraying the grieving husband. I believed every moment of it.
Olivia Wilde is a find actress as well. Her fear and transition into the monster was as natural as it could be given the dialogue and timing allotted. I look forward to seeing her star in much better productions.
Donald Glover portrayed Niko, a student smitten with Zoe. I love him. I loved him on Community. I love his stand-up. I don’t think he was given any real time to shine and his character was given zero depth, but he worked with what he had.
For some reason they had Evan Peters portray Jesse Eisenberg in this movie. He was dressed like him and shared Eisenberg’s mannerisms. Both my husband and I were like, “why did they make him Jesse Eisenberg?” His character name is Clay and he is the one who definitely doesn’t want any part of breaking back in or bringing Zoe back to life. He knows the dog was messed up, but eventually goes along with it. I felt for Peters because he’s not a bad actor, but there was no saving this character. It was like watching Kyle Labine in Freddy vs. Jason doing his best Jason Mewes impression. I don’t get it. I don’t understand the desire of the powers-that-be to force otherwise decent actors into these horrible caricatures. Do the Money Men in Hollywood really think the kids are saying, “I like Jesse Eisenberg so much that if a guy dresses and acts like him, I’m SOOO going to see the Lazarus Effect.”
Regardless, the movie is just a mediocre Sunday film with awful CGI. It’s been done a million times before. The conclusion is stupid. I was hoping for something more like the film The Stuff when the men in power rebrand it to The Taste. I thought it would be cool if Big Pharma came in, covered everything up and sold the experiment as successful thus unleashing this terror everywhere else. It still would have been something we’ve seen before, but I like conclusions like that over “fuck it, we’re almost done ….what if (SPOILERS) the crazy dead chick does the experiment to all of her dead friends.”
Overall, if your’e a Mark Duplass fan like myself, watch it. He’s a great actor. Don’t expect much of anything of value and definitely don’t expect anything new. If you go in with zero expectations, you’ll only mildly be disappointed. However, if you want something that will blow your fucking mind, that you’ll want to watch a helluva lot more than once and will leave you with questions you didn’t even know you had, seek out 2B: The Era of Flesh is Over.
Scared Stiff Rating: 4/10
