Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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MARCH 18-24, 2015 UCW 19 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Twitter @evoInkTattoo Instagram Evolutionink1 Pet Cemetery 3: Flatliners The Lazarus Effect (Rated PG-13) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS The Lazarus Effect (83 minutes) is arguably a "mumblecore" film. "What is a mumblecore film?" you might ask. Well, it's a mumblecore horror film, like The Sacrament. Mark Duplass is in the film, and about 75 percent of the time, I place his movies into the mumblecore section of my video collection. If you're a Duplass fan and saw Humpday or Your Sister's Sister after watching him on The League, then you're already pretty familiar with the style. Essentially, mumblecore films emphasize naturalistic dialogue and tell unfamil- iar stories on a relatively low budget. It's not exactly that the characters "mumble" their dialogue, though it happens often enough that when I whip out a mumblecore movie my husband's usual reaction is an unenthusiastic "Oh. There's a lot of talking and I won't hear half of it." He's no snob and is happy to enjoy a dialogue driven film — if it's his kind of dialogue. Mumblecore film dialogue usually centers on "feelings" and "relationships," and not the cool kind, like in a Wes Anderson movie. Hence, his overwhelming disinterest. Anyway, when I sat down to watch the latest from Blumhouse Productions I reasonably expected something a little more out of the common, instead of Pet Semetary 3: Flatliners. Overall, it wasn't entirely a waste of my time to slum it a bit and enjoy a short horror film with no distinguishing features. Mostly, it's just another film that doesn't bother to separate itself from a dozen other generic reanimation-gone-wrong movie plots. Clearly, the filmmakers watched the classics and borrowed concepts and dialogue from the right sources — they just didn't really add anything to their mash-up of other, more original and frankly better films. Scientists Frank (Mark Duplass) and his fiancée Zoe (Olivia Wilde) "do science" instead of having a real relationship. They "science" hardcore and try to reanimate dead animals in order to do more "science" on people later. They manage to reani- mate a dog because they skipped the part about not playing God in science school. Then, disregarding all common sense, they bring the dog home and completely fail to record all the weird stuff it does, since lab animals and household pets are basi- cally interchangeable and definitely do not carry unknown diseases, gps trackers or demons. Frank and Zoe have some random lab assistants to help them science dead ani- mals, including Clay (Evan Peters), Niko (Donald Glover) and Eva (Sarah Bolger). Niko plays the only black character, and while he is not wearing a red shirt, I double dare you to guess where he falls in the kill chronology. Rocky the Reanimated Dog spends the rest of the film doing telekinesis and making like Cujo. Meanwhile, Frank is in danger of getting shut down for violating the IRB protocols he was supposed to follow. The team for Sexy Science can't have that, and promptly violates some more IRB protocols by attempting to resurrect another dog. That doesn't end well, but at least they get to try their science on a human, which also doesn't end well. Obviously, I am giving it three stars because I didn't hate it. One thing this film can hang its hat on is its ability to ratchet up the tension. Put some talented young actors in a dark room long enough and they can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. The nihilism typical to a Blumhouse pic is evident throughout — none of the characters come off as sympathetic enough to be untouchable, so the audience can expect most, if not all, of the cast to get wiped out. If you've got a weekday afternoon free and feel like playing hooky you could do worse than to slip into an empty theater to see this for a cheap thrill. Now showing at Market Fair 15, Carmike 12 and Patriot 14. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.