Doctors/lovers Mark Duplass and Oliva Wilde head up a research team at a local University, working on reviving brain cells (The team also includes Evan Peters, Donald Glover and documentarian Sarah Bolger). This naturally leads to reviving a dog. It proves successful in terms of re-animation, though some members of the team (mainly Bolger) believe the dog is exhibiting oddly erratic, ‘Cujo’-esque behaviour (which wouldn’t have happened if they had chosen a Pug, they’re too dumb and happy to hurt anyone!). And that’s when their whole project gets shut down thanks to an anonymous call to higher-ups. All of their research ends up taken out of their hands by nasty corporate rep Ray Wise (in a one-scene cameo). The solution? A late-night break-in, and starting all over again. This time, however, they’ll record everything on camera. Unfortunately, it’s at this moment that the electricity in the building goes haywire and Wilde is electrocuted.
A distraught Duplass decides to use their already proven methods to revive his fiancé. It appears to work, however, even more so than the dog, Wilde starts to behave strangely…and violently. She also appears to have come back with the ability to use 90% of her brain all the time (Despite what ‘Lucy’ and ‘Limitless’ tell you, we have access to all 100% of our brain, just not all of it all of the time), making her seem super-human.
Lame 2015 blend of ‘Flatliners’, ‘Pet Sematary’, and a little ‘Cujo’ that somehow managed to gain the services of Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass, and Evan Peters in the cast. Wilde is OK, but none of the three come up with anything remarkable, and neither do director David Gelb (who mostly comes from a documentary background) or his screenwriters Luke Dawson (‘Shutter’) & Jeremy Slater (2015’s infamous ‘Fantastic Four’). It’s formulaic, distressingly dull, and not even remotely frightening. It is, however a bit smarter than ‘Limitless’ and ‘Lucy’ on that whole ‘10% of your brain’ nonsense, so I’ll give it that. It’s also a really slick-looking film thanks to cinematographer Michael Fimognari, with good camerawork. That doesn’t add up to a good film, however, and perhaps first-time fiction filmmaker Gelb would’ve done better to stick to the thing he knows.
The cast looks good on paper, but don’t really impress on screen. Mark Duplass (a long way from the excellent ‘Safety Not Guaranteed’) is mopey and low-key, Donald Glover makes no impression whatsoever, Evan Peters (the only thing in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ that didn’t suck) is saddled with the awful ‘token stoner’ role, whilst Olivia Wilde tries her best in an impossible role. It’s definitely not her fault the film fails, though one wonders why she accepted the role at all. The characters here are all paper thin, the whole damn thing is over in what feels like a flash. It’s also a total waste of veteran Ray Wise, who only has one very short scene of little interest. He’s just there to help the (extremely flimsy) plot along. In just the first twenty minutes alone there’s way too many silly ‘Boo!’ moments, and it’s just incredibly mediocre overall. There’s a few interesting moments involving what happens to Wilde’s character, but a lot of it is extremely clichéd, too.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Tepid, flimsy ‘Playing God’ horror/thriller with a better than usual cast gone to waste on a premise that’s as old as the hills. Damn good-looking, but not a good film at all. It makes ‘Pet Sematary’ and ‘Flatliners’ look like ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’.
