When I looked up The Lazarus Project (2008) on Wikipedia, I had to chuckle.  One of the subheadings on the film’s page is listed as “Themes.”  If you are a Christian, you might have already guessed where this is going.  The title is an oblique reference to John 11:1-44, which details how Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead.  The word “oblique” encapsulates what this section on the Wikipedia site discusses.  To expand some, the movie and scripture bear little resemblance to one another, but that is what it wants you to think of while watching it.  There is also the annoying suggestion that the Catholic Church is behind what you see here, although that connection is probably more noticed by this adherent to the Faith than others.  Then again, this is the kind of analysis I am here to provide.

All Ben Garvey (Paul Walker) wants to do in The Lazarus Project is provide for his family.  The ex-convict has seemingly rebuilt his life working for a brewery in Dallas, Texas.  He is somebody on whom his company can rely, and he loves his wife, Lisa Garvey (Piper Perabo), and daughter, Katie Garvey (Brooklynn Proulx).  Then his younger brother, Ricky Garvey (Shawn Hatosy), who has also just gotten out of prison, has to come around and ruin everything.  Though Ben initially rejects Ricky’s scheme for a heist, soon the older sibling feels he has no choice.  Because Lisa wants to go to realtor school, which will cost money, when Ben is fired because of his criminal record, he decides to take up Ricky’s offer.  However, as they are about to make off with the loot, police officers arrive, shooting starts, and four people die.  Even though Ben had not pulled the trigger, the state of Texas sentences him to lethal injection.  After saying goodbye to Katie and Lisa, he is strapped down and given the needle.  With a confusing set of flashing images, we see him walking down a country road in Oregon where he is picked up by Father Ezra (Bob Gunton).  The priest runs a facility that had once been a seminary (I think?), but now houses mental patients.  Ben has been hired to be the groundskeeper, though you might be wondering, “What about the whole death penalty thing?”  As he is settling into his new environs, he is visited by Avery (Lambert Wilson).  He is somebody that we see in the scattered visions to which we are treated from Ben’s mind, and Avery is somehow responsible for Ben being here instead of dead or, more importantly, with his family.  Naturally, Ben wants to go home, but Avery tells the new arrival that only death awaits outside of the facility’s confines.  Instead, Ben is told that he must try to let go of his past and embrace the apparently miraculous second chance he has been gifted.  He tries to test this theory at one point, buying a bus ticket and boarding.  However, Avery soon gets on, too, and tells Ben that doom awaits.  Upon returning to town, Ben notices a newspaper detailing a bus crash that killed everyone aboard, and he could have been one of them.  There are other strange things going on at the institute.  One of the patients, Robbie (Malcolm Goodwin), who helps Ben with the chores, is always insisting that they are being watched.  At first, Ben dismisses these warnings as lunatic fantasies, but he keeps noticing people dressed as electric company workers glancing away whenever he lays eyes on them.  There is also William Reeds (Tony Curran), another person being treated at the site, who is of the more violent variety.  Every time Ben and William interact, the latter claims that they are the same.  Still, not everything going on is odd.  There is Julie Ingram (Linda Cardellini), a psychiatrist, with whom Ben gets close.  They go to dinner, share a walk in the woods, and at one point she comes to the cabin where he is living and they end up kissing.  It is clear that they think the smooch is a mistake.  It can be chalked up as a moment of vulnerability, particularly as it comes on the heels of William’s suicide.  He had escaped his holding cell, and it had been Ben who found the troubled man.  William had previously been spotted by Ben, carving strange symbols into the trees.  Before leaping to his death, William had talked about death being the only way to get away from this place.  William’s last words haunt Ben, and the latter continues to pine for his family.  Thus, one night he resolves to escape, but is knocked out while in the middle of running.  Coming to, he is in Father Ezra’s office, who tells Ben that he has been there for longer than he realizes.  Additionally, Ben had accidentally burned down his house with Katie and Lisa inside, killing them.  Instead of being locked up, he had been transferred to the mental hospital.  Once he is shown some corroborating evidence for this reality, he tries to embrace his new life.  However, as he is clearing away some branches, he finds a frisbee he had thrown to his dog, a pet he had found in the woods.  He had been told the pooch was not real since they do not allow animals on the ground, but he finds it at a local pound.  Next, he uncovers surveillance equipment in the cabin he had been inhabiting, which he had also been told was a fantasy.  The façade is completely destroyed when he uncovers his medical file, digs a chip out of his arm, and finds Avery monitoring him in a windowless room.  There is a brief confrontation with Avery and Father Ezra, with Ben telling them that if they kill him, their crimes will be reported to news outlets.  They let Ben leave, and we close with him pulling up to the house where Katie and Lisa now live.

The excuse that Avery and Father Ezra provide at the end of The Lazarus Project is that they are trying to fix human beings.  As a Catholic, there is a lot to dislike about this concept, especially since it is coming from a person that I guess is supposed to be a priest.  It is fuzzy since sometimes he is depicted in clerics, but mostly in civilian clothing.  Either way, the Church is not here to fix anyone.  That is for God alone.  Faith is merely a tool in His hands.  In the introduction I stated that I was annoyed with the suggested connection between Catholicism and what happens in the film.  What I can take some comfort in is that there is nothing religious about the film.  Indeed, Father Ezra suggests that Ben imagining Avery as an angel is nothing more than a hallucination.  What is happening in the supposed priest’s view is Ben’s mind desire for healing from a traumatic event.  While it is abhorrent that he is being told a lie about what is going on with him and what happened to his family, I appreciate the notion that he is seeking a remedy.  There is also something to be said for the idea of accepting things as they are, particularly as they pertain to who God made us to be.  At the same time, it is a fine line to walk.  To understand how to navigate this philosophical mine field, it is helpful to recall the “Serenity Prayer”: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”  It is sometimes inaccurately attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, but it is typically used by people in recovery as a sort of mantra to help cope with the enormity of addiction.  Regardless of its source, the notion of focusing on the things God gives us the power to control is a good lesson, but not one that is accepted by Ben.  Granted, he is being deceived, and he reacts as any would if they learned a similar truth.  However, had Father Ezra’s version of reality been proven correct, then the rest makes for good advice.

As I sat down to write this review of The Lazarus Project, I thought my advice was going to be that it is a sneakily good movie.  I felt this despite the film wandering a bit in the middle, which makes me realize that my instincts were incorrect.  The more one thinks about this movie, the more it falls apart.