Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Another cheapie from the producers of "Paranormal Activity." Aims low, but hits its target.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A tense, efficient medical thriller best enjoyed sans microscope.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Like too many horror films, this one seems targeted at a hypothetical audience using only 10 percent of its brainpower.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Mildly enjoyable despite its basic mediocrity .

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
The Lazarus Effect doesn't exactly break new ground, but it nonetheless finds plenty to relish in the mouldering bits it stitches together as it gives classic themes about death, life and the soul a literal and figurative shot in the arm.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
You've seen it all before. The only question is: Why haven't they?

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
It's thematically thin but competently made and good for a few scares.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
There are lessons to be learned from this minimalist thriller. The first is that scaring people requires more than just tossing furniture around, turning the lights off and on, and basically sneaking up from behind and shouting "Boo!"

Name : Ben Kenigsberg / Alias : New York Times
[A] risible mix of pseudoscientific hokum and supernatural freakouts.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Absorbing, well-crafted and appropriately tense, with a smart cast that raises it a notch above average.

Name : Kevin C. Johnson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"The Lazarus Effect" boasts nothing special. It's not going to provide much relief for horror-starved audiences.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
The film intends to explore the nature and mystery of death, but devolves into a combination of trivial science fiction and banal "Pet Sematary" havoc.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The Lazarus Effect begins with an intriguing premise then proceeds to squander all the early goodwill through a slow, inexorable descent into cheap horror gimmicks.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Doesn't go far enough, isn't scary enough and has mad scientists who just aren't mad enough.

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The film squanders whatever potential it had, not to mention the talents of such performers as Duplass and Wilde who clearly deserve better.

Name : Keith Staskiewicz / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
I would have loved to see more from the filmmakers, daring to fail while staking out some new terror incognita instead of just going through the motions of an experiment for which we already have the results.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
No resurrection for this dog please.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
A grimy, dopey, confused thriller that wastes a very likable cast.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
This is an 83-minute movie that feels a half hour longer and, if it weren't for the loud crescendos, it would put people to sleep.

Name : Simon Abrams / Alias : Village Voice
Death may not be the end in The Lazarus Effect, but it should be.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Looks like it was directed by a blind and deaf person over a weekend on a leftover laboratory set from a TV show and edited with a roulette wheel.

Name : Geoff Berkshire / Alias : Variety
Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde struggle to breathe life into a recycled thriller about the horrors of reanimation.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It staggers, zombielike, from one jump-scare to another before petering out, a scant 83 minutes after rising from the slab.

Name : Bruce Demara / Alias : Toronto Star
While The Lazarus Effect isn't the worst scary movie film you'll see this year, it is probably one of the most predictable and lazily plotted.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
"The Lazarus Effect" is nothing but a cheap horror film cloaked in scientific mumbo-jumbo.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The filmmaker and his on-screen proxies boldly go places our national discourse desperately needs to go, yet rarely does.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"If I were as unfair as director Mike Binder is to his African-American characters, I'd say this project is a white filmmaker's rationalization to have a white character occasionally say (and certainly think) the N-word while raising a black child."

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
This is a tiresome interracial custody dramedy in which white non-guilt righteously dukes it out with black melodrama.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A broad but touching dramedy about the racial barriers that divide us and the family ties that bind.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Kevin Costner shines in Mike Binder's disappointingly dull and safe-playing race relations drama.