You would think that Victor Frankenstein would be the best cautionary tale against playing with electricity and corpses, but there always has to be a group of doctors arrogant enough to believe that they can bring the dead back to life. This time it’s Olivia Wilde and Mark Duplass as the good doctors, and in the first trailer for The Lazarus Effect, they’re going biblical.
The Lazarus Effect looks like a pretty typical horror movie: Med students—likely working in secret—Wilde, Duplass, Donald Glover, and Evan Peters graduate from resurrecting dead dogs to bringing back humans when Wilde accidentally gets herself electrocuted. But of course, she comes back somehow wrong.
The obvious title aside, you can see a few biblical allusions in this trailer: At one point when Wilde’s character is looking especially demonic, the screen briefly flashes to John 11, the biblical story about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead; and twice there are bodies covered in sheets, not unlike Lazarus peeling off his grave clothes upon regaining life.
Whether Wilde is actually possessed will be made clearer once the movie comes out next month, but so far reaction seems to be positive. This is Wilde’s first horror film; same with director David Gelb, best known for the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. However, producer Jason Blum—who compares the film to Joel Schumacher’s 1990 thriller Flatliners—has worked on the Paranormal Activity and Insidious franchises.
Watch the trailer and judge for yourself:
The Lazarus Effect comes to life February 27.
