Olivia Wilde has honed her skills as a dramatic and comic actress over the years, appearing in such diverse projects as Rush, Drinking Buddies, TRON: Legacy and The Change-Up, but she’ll be adding a new genre to her resume this February with low-budget frightener The Lazarus Effect. In the first trailer for the Jason Blum-produced pic, which you can check out below, Wilde makes a strong case for why we should just leave all the menacing and murderous roles in horror films to her from now on.
Mark Duplass, Donald Glover, Evan Peters and Sarah Bolger also star in the flick, about a group of researchers who, while mapping the brain in a series of experiments that explore life after death, have an accident that results in the death of one of their own (Wilde). Using the discoveries of their experiments, the repercussions of which they haven’t even begun to fathom, the researchers are able to resurrect their colleague, only to realize that she has come back… different. Cue the freaky paranormal activity.
Blum, who cited Flatliners as an influence when asked about the film, has already stated his desire to do a sequel should The Lazarus Effect do well, so he’s clearly confident in the script (by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater) and direction (by David Gelb) here. With the cast that has been assembled, a franchise certainly seems like an intriguing possiblity, though we’ll have to wait until The Lazarus Effect opens February 27th to learn whether the buzz about this flick was warranted.
