LAZARETH - Mark Reviews Movies

Lazareth, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 9, 2024

Lazareth has one idea of some note, although writer/director Alec Tibaldi's movie is mostly about hiding that idea and then ignoring it for a violent showdown. That the secret conceit of the story doesn't make much practical sense is almost irrelevant. What does it matter, anyway, if the material fails to do anything that questions or addresses the core of its story?

The setup involves three women in an isolated house, surrounded by forest and far from any sign of civilization. As a brief prologue establishes, though, there's probably not much of civilization left from which to be distanced.

A pandemic has devastated the country—presumably the world. Lee (Ashley Judd) has taken refuge in the remote cabin, which she dubs Lazareth, with her two nieces, whose parents have died as a result of the contagious disease. In the opening scene, their quiet life is interrupted by a woman outside pleading for food. Lee is willing to give her a few cans, but then, the woman starts scratching herself. Assuming the stranger is infected, Lee shoots and kills the desperate visitor with a shotgun.

Ten years later, Lee hasn't changed much. She's still pretty jumpy for someone who has spent a decade surviving in the wild, occasionally traveling into a nearby town to scavenge for food and supplies, and presumably seeing all sorts of death and chaos, based on the cryptic way she describes her trips to the now-teenaged nieces. Judd is generally a strong actor, but her performance here feels over-the-top and unconvincing. Most of that, perhaps, comes down to Tibaldi's screenplay, which forces the character to behave in such a way that provokes conflict, even when and probably because there isn't much of it within the story's limited setting.

There's definitely one eventually, when Maeve (Sarah Pidgeon), the elder sibling, discovers a young man camping in the woods. He's Owen (Asher Angel), a guy whom we first see fleeing from some building in what's left of the neighboring town. He's wounded and can't fend for himself, and as a young woman who probably hasn't seen a man in a decade, Maeve is drawn to him and wants to help.

After confiding in her sister Imogen (Katie Douglas), Maeve confronts Owen and offers some aid, and eventually, the two sisters have to drag his unconscious body back to the cabin to stitch and treat his wound. Lee discovers their not-so-little secret, but Maeve convinces her aunt not to kill or kick out the guy, because there might be people looking for him or he might tell others about their sanctuary.

From there, the story ambles, as Maeve and Imogen both take a liking to Owen and start bickering because of their shared infatuation. Meanwhile, Lee's suspicions about the stranger subside once he starts helping with chores and fixes her broken-down pickup truck, and once a key piece of information about the backdrop of this story is revealed, we realize the relationship between Lee and Owen is missing at least one vital conversation for their truce to make sense.

Then again, Owen's entire character is missing a very specific component, mainly that he can only exist as a plot device. Any talking about his life or his experiences beyond missing and presumably dead parents would destroy the game Tibaldi is playing here. If the story and characters feel shallow, that's mainly on account of that being necessary to keep us from asking too many questions.

Conveniently, then, a distraction arrives in the form of Owen's former gang, who raid the house, steal a bunch of things, and, also with some convenience, don't bother to look in any of the places where the residents are hiding. That sets up the final conflict, as Lee and the young people have to defend the cabin. Considering how much shifts in between the setup with the gang and the payoff with the showdown, it's quite underwhelming.

Yes, there's a twist here, which isn't too difficult to predict well ahead of its revelation. Even so, it does change our entire perspective of these characters, this scenario, and what the story is trying to say about them (Tibaldi literally changes the perspective, too, by way of an admittedly neat shift in aspect ratio that hides the broadening of the frame by cheating with an in-camera frame). As for what Lazareth has to say about any of those things, it's not going to let any actual ideas, unfortunately, get in the way of a gimmick or an action-oriented climax.

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