The Lazarus Effect: First Trailer

Blumhouse Productions continues its knack for attracting great casts to its medium-budget horror productions with The Lazarus Effect, which stars Olivia Wilde, Mark Duplass, Donald Glover and Quicksilver himself, Evan Peters.

It's about a group of medical students who tinker with the boundary between life and death; their attempt to revive the corpse of a dog proves to be successful, and when Olivia Wilde's character abruptly pops her clogs, Mark Duplass decides to bring her back with his newly-patented life serum.

The plot - and indeed the first trailer, lurking below - sound quite a bit like Stuart Gordon's anarchic adaptation of HP Lovecraft's Re-Animator, but played for scowls rather than laughs. In that 1985 classic, medical students use a glowing ooze to revive a dead cat, which turns out to be incredibly aggressive, before inadvertently populating the entire campus with wild-eyed revenants.

Directed by David Gelb - who previously directed the fabulous documentary Jiro Dreams Of Sushi - The Lazarus Effect has undergone a couple of name changes over the course of its production. It began as Reawakening, before becoming Lazarus, and then shifting again to The Lazarus Effect.

The Lazarus Effect is out in cinemas on February 27.