I love horror films. I seriously, most truly, REALLY-REALLY DO! Just ask my mom. What I DO NOT love are movie trailers that give too much of the film away. This trailer below (don’t watch it!) pretty much features every single scary “jump in your seat” moment of the entire film. What gives? It also leaks the fact that its best male actor (sorry, Evan Peters), stand-up comedian Donald Glover (aka rapper Childish Gambino), most certainly DIES in the film. Sorry for the spoiler, but dammit—it’s RIGHT THERE in the feckin’ trailer. Yep, there it is at the 2:05 mark (don’t watch it!). The whole plot gets a linear summation; the only thing the trailer doesn’t show is is that this is also yet another strong Christian fearmongering morality tale (yawn).
The Lazarus Effect doesn’t have any of the funny gross-out camp of its obvious predecessors—films like Frankenhooker or Re-Animator—and it has no gory-brilliant moments, like when Uncle Frank came back from the dead in the original Hellraiser (which was by drinking blood and eating human flesh, duh). Lazarus even flashes its namesake—the goddamn Bible verse, John 11—when the credits roll. It’s a pretty predictable retelling of how science, no matter how advanced it is, will never ever be a match for Heaven or Hell, or for our Christian God and his ol’ pal Satan. Another spoiler you might NOT get from the trailer (don’t watch it!) is that lead zombie Olivia Wilde just isn’t scary. I think maybe she’s too pretty. The same intense telekinesis face that Sissy Spacek OWNED in Carrie, just doesn’t work on Wilde’s model perfect mug. Her scary “Oooh-I’m-going-to-kill-you-by-just-using-my-miiiind!”-face is rather timid. More like “resting bitch face.” I’d give this trailer a C, and the actual 83-minute film a D+.
