THE LAZARUS EFFECT directed by David Gelb, written by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater, with Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Donald Glover and Sarah Bolger. A D Films release. 83 minutes. Opens Friday (February 27). For venues and times, see Movies.
The Lazarus Effect isn’t Donald Glover’s first visit to the horror genre. In a beloved Halloween episode of Community, his character – dim but decent college student Troy – saved his entire campus from a zombie outbreak.
Of course, Community was a sitcom, and The Lazarus Effect – which stars Glover, Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde as researchers whose experiments in reanimating the dead lead to fairly messy results – is straight-up horror. But there are some things that connect the genres, he says.
“You can put them in front of a test audience and see a laugh here or a scare there, these things you’re hoping feel like surprises even though you’ve been planning them for months in advance,” he says. “Timing is something that anybody who’s done comedy can relate to. You’ve gotta know the right way to do that kinda stuff, and Mark and Olivia and everybody are really good at that.”
The idea of seeing how director David Gelb would handle the horror genre was another attraction. Glover was a fan of the filmmaker’s delicate documentary Jiro Dreams Of Sushi.
“[David] understands presentation, you know?” Glover laughs. “Jiro Dreams Of Sushi was really about presentation. Of course it’s delicious, he’s using all the best ingredients, but [Jiro’s] giving it to you in a certain way, and also [David’s] shooting it in a certain way so it feels like art. That’s pretty much like a lot of things now it’s like how do things feel? Because everybody knows how they work.”
In addition to his hip-hop work as Childish Gambino, Glover has two highly anticipated pictures coming this year: Magic Mike XXL in July and The Martian in November. He says they’re both part of a simple career strategy: work with interesting people on worthwhile endeavours.
“Project to project, I always try to make them special,” he says, explaining that The Lazarus Effect offered him the opportunity to work with producer Jason Blum, whose production company makes the Paranormal Activity, Insidious and Sinister movies but also brought Whiplash to the screen.
“I really liked the Blumhouse model,” he says, “and wanted to learn more about it. And I got to work with David, who did one of my favourite documentaries ever, and Mark Duplass and Olivia. It was a passion project, and I hadn’t been able to do that in a long time.”
Does shadowing a producer mean Glover’s looking to do more behind the camera himself? He’s already directed a short for hip-hop alter ego Childish Gambino, but is he looking at features?
“I’m looking, yeah,” he says. “I really like it when people are like, ‘I didn’t know.’ That’s what I always kinda chase a lot lately. I want people to be, ‘Oh, I didn’t know he did that.’ I feel like under-promise, over-deliver with everything. That’s the only way to get a reaction out of people.”
Interview Clips
Glover on how director David Gelb steered the cast and the movie.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
