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Watching The Lazarus Effect (2015) is almost like watching two movies. The first part focuses on the work of a team of researchers who developed a serum that may be able to reanimate the dead. They talk, they examine their morals, and they discuss the ethical quandaries involved with what they’re attempting to do. We discover that the project’s two main scientists, Frank (Mark Duplass) and Zoe (Olivia Wilde) are a religiously-split romantic couple surviving a three-year engagement because the work allows them no time to actually get married. Frank is a potent atheist with a scientific explanation for everything, while Zoe, who wears a cross around her neck, is open to believing there’s more than science can prove.

When their experiment manages to bring a dog back to life, the philosophical debates intensify. Zoe poses questions like “What if he didn’t want to come back? What if we ripped him from doggie heaven?” She needs to be reminded by Frank that the work they’re doing is important, despite the controversy that comes from playing God. Little else actually happens during the film’s first half hour aside from the installation of these thematic questions.

And then… Zoe dies, Frank goes nuts and brings her back to life, and the film forgets all about them.

“The Lazarus Effect tosses out some heady questions as it journeys from Flatliners (1990) to flatlining… And for a while, it seems like it’s morphing into an interesting hybrid of Lucy (2014) and Carrie (1976). But when it goes in for the kills and buries its resurrected head in a steaming quicksand of religious mumbo-jumbo, it leaves you feeling like you were just about to chomp into a juicy burger and the patty fell out.” - Roy Ivy, Consequence of Sound

“For long stretches of the movie it just plays like a hodgepodge of other, better movies, everything from Flatliners (which they have lifted an entire subplot from, wholesale) to Pet Semetary (1989), with much of the first act devoted to a dog that they have brought back but who is now, somehow, different (cue ominous music). And this game of spot-the-homage would be fun if The Lazarus Effect weren’t so bone-chillingly dull. Not only does the thematic investigation into the prospect of playing God go out the window once Scary Olivia Wilde becomes the movie’s chief concern, but any kind of aesthetic value goes along with it, leaving an empty shell of a movie, ready for mass market consumption but devoid of any sort of personality or discernable identity.” - Drew Taylor, IndieWire

The film kicks off with promising philosophical examinations that, once Zoe transforms into a walking ball of hell, are dropped entirely. From that point forward, the film turns into Frank wandering dim corridors, muttering junk about how everything will be okay, while Zoe picks off the rest of her research staff with dull PG-13 appropriate deaths like crushing Niko (Donald Glover) in a cabinet. It effectively renders the entire first half hour of the film moot and turns into an overly trite bunch of pan shots, cheap jump scares and concentrated “boo!” moments that have nothing to say about the ethical, moral, and religious questions it raised earlier.