Line #20 Film/TheLazarusEffect


1	[[quoteright:298:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/9bdc4d0fc8f9f70dba272ff45da5ccc5.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:298:Clinical trials can be hell.]]
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4	''The Lazarus Effect'' is a 2015 film starring Creator/MarkDuplass, Creator/OliviaWilde, Creator/SarahBolger, Creator/EvanPeters, and Creator/DonaldGlover. A team of scientists is working on creating a better means of resuscitating dead patients to allow doctors more time to heal them. When they get shut down for overstepping the bounds of their grant, they try to do one last experiment to prove they can do it… and things get worse when project leader Zoe gets accidentally electrocuted, only for her fiancé Frank to attempt the procedure on her. Things go downhill from there.
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7	!!This film provides examples of:
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9	* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain: Clay thinks this is what's going on with Zoe. Though he notes that the regular trope is a myth and that it's 10% of the brain that gets used ''at a time'', but her serum is causing her to use 100% of her brain ''all the time.''
10	* AxCrazy: Zoe turns into an utter psycho when she comes back from the dead. Although it's possible that she was an unhinged loon to begin with, what with [[spoiler: her involvement in the apartment complex fire and all.]]
11	* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Zigzagged. The plot of the movie, of course, hinges on the fact that Zoe dies and comes back, [[spoiler: but she kills Nico first.]]
12	* BlackEyesOfEvil: Zoe post-resurrection.
13	* CameBackWrong: It starts with the dog they first successfully resurrect, Rocky. He's listless and won't eat or drink. Then he starts going all Cujo. Zoe herself starts exhibiting behavior that leads her friends to think she's a victim of DemonicPossession. [[spoiler:She very much isn't.]]
14	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Mr. Wise, the owner of the rival pharmaceutical company and the Dean of the school. The latter allows the former to take all the research, and the former spied on the team and sabotaged their research once they got results.
15	* DarkAndTroubledPast: Zoe survived a fire that killed many people in her apartment complex. She's had recurring nightmares of it for years. [[spoiler:Turns out she set it.]]
16	* DemonicPossession: [[spoiler:Eva ''thinks'' this might be the case, but it's unclear whether it was possession, Zoe going crazy from the resurrection, or Zoe going crazy from having been in Hell. Given she intentionally started the fire that ends up being her personal Hell, [[EvilAllAlong she might even have been bad all along]].]]
17	* DiabolusExMachina: Most of the ending is this.
18	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Between the rival corporation having its hands on the Lazarus research and the now evil Zoe resurrecting everyone she killed, no good can come of whatever happens next.]]
19	* DyingAsYourself: [[spoiler:{{Subverted}}. Zoe not only survives, it might have been just a dying dream.]]
20	* TheEndingChangesEverything: The ending shows [[spoiler: the villain's RedemptionEqualsDeath was all a DyingDream by the FinalGirl. The villain is alive, and the FinalGirl is dead.]] This works well with the film's theme of MaybeMagicMaybeMundane, as a magical explanation would make a great deal of what we saw accurate anyway, while a mundane explanation would call it into question.
21	* EvilDetectingDog: Rocky barks at Zoe after her resurrection. [[spoiler:She kills him, and the ending reveals she started the fire in her apartment, so his instincts were spot on.]]
22	* {{Expy}}: Olivia Wilde plays a biology/medicine scientist in a story that deals with very esoteric scientific ideas and is filled with TechnoBabble. This is very similar to her BreakoutRole in [[Series/{{House}} a TV show that ended just a year before]] the filming of this movie started.
23	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Zoe says she spent her whole life doing everything right and feels like she went to hell over a single mistake. [[spoiler:This hints at the fact that she was the one who started the fire]].
24	* {{Hell}}: Zoe claims that she went there after she died. For her, Hell was being forced to relive that fire in her apartment as punishment for [[spoiler:starting it in the first place]].
25	* HellHound: Rocky becomes a form of this.
26	* IKnowYouAreInThereSomewhereFight: It works momentarily, but Frank was inwardly doubting she was herself and could be saved. Zoe picks up on it with her telepathy and... it doesn't end well for Frank.
27	* KickTheDog: Well, Rocky was already going creepy and possibly murderous, but Zoe taking him out was definitely part of her slippery slope.
28	* JerkassHasAPoint: The Dean & the Pharmaceutical Company confiscate the research in the most obnoxious way possible, but they are right. Frank was conducting deeply unethical research that both far exceeded his mandate and violated the terms of the grant agreement. The Dean is completely correct that Frank has no one to blame but himself and that was the only realistic outcome once his actions were discovered. The Dean is also correct that he is a hopeless idealist trying to prove his theories about death and the afterlife, which deeply offended the University's donors (The University is religious institution.) His research ''was'' endangering the funding of the entire University on the off chance he might be right. As such, she was well within her rights to shut the program down.
29	* TheMole: It's suspected a member of the team leaked information on their success to the Dean, allowing his company to swoop in and steal their research. It's discovered later that he had actually been monitoring their progress for months through the security system, explaining how he was so quickly able to capitalize on their mistake.
30	* NeckSnap: How [[spoiler:Eva]] goes out.
31	* NightmareSequence: Zoe, of a fire when she was a child. [[spoiler:That she started. ''On purpose.'']]
32	* PsychicPowers: Zoe starts exhibiting powers thanks to the serum, namely MindOverMatter and {{Telepathy}}.
33	* RecycledPremise: Critics noted this movie resembles ''Film/{{Flatliners}}''.
34	* SequelHook: The corrupt corporation has the research, and [[spoiler:Zoe and her newly resurrected fiancée and friends are now free to wreak havoc.]]
35	* UnrequitedLove: Niko for Zoe.
36	* ViralTransformation: [[spoiler:After Zoe kills everyone and pumps herself full of the serum, she then plugs herself into the injection machine and proceeds to start resurrecting everyone.]]

Context Film / TheLazarusEffect