The people in Hell are starving while the people in Heaven feast in Lizzie Lazarus. Drawing comparisons to Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, the twisted psychological horror film will be resurrected January 14 exclusively on SCREAMBOX.

My first screener of 2025, and my first 2025 new release to add to my Letterboxd list! Huzzah!

I do so love getting screeners because I’ve gotten to see and recommend so many movies I’d have otherwise never heard of if not for them. Last year was a great one for screeners, with my finding Hundreds Of Beavers, Here For Blood, and so many others before they hit the [slightly] big[ger] time.

This year’s first such outing for me is Lizzie Lazarus, a SCREAMBOX offering about two people out to attempt an ancient mystical ritual to resurrect a third. Our deceased is the titular Lizzie, and those working out a way to revive her are her boyfriend Eli and her sister Bethany. The two spend a night lugging Lizzie’s body nine miles through the woods at night to bury her in a special field right at the Solstice.

Eli and Bethany have a lot of conflict, as each blames the other for Lizzie’s passing, all while silently blaming themselves. Their personalities don’t exactly match up, either, as Bethany fills any uncomfortable silence with conspiratorial rantings, whereas Eli just wants to listen to his walkman in peace.

Oh yeah, he has a walkman. Because this is set in 1990 for… no real reason whatsoever. It just is.

As the night progresses, the two find out more and more about each other and develop something of a bond between them as they work together to bring their beloved Lizzie back to life.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The movie starts off very interesting with a musical number of all things that seems to promise a different kind of movie to come. Unfortunately that never materializes, but the song does end up paying off when you get further in down the movie. For a long time, I was holding on to that song, first hoping it would lead to a transformation in the mood of the movie, then wondering what the point of it was. And, as I said, the movie does give us the latter.

Besides the opening tune, the whole first act is interesting as the movie sets up its premise of Bethany and Eli in the woods. Their dialogue is engaging and sharp, and the whole mystery of what brought these two together and what happened to Lizzie promises to unfold. They also encounter more in the forest at night than they expected!

+ The third act reveal is not entirely shocking, as you get to a point where you realize SOMETHING has to happen when Bethany and Eli get to their destination. And there are clues along the way. Still, when you get there, the payoff is worthwhile, and it makes some of what you saw before make more sense. The film is moving to a certain climax the whole time, and it gets there successfully.

The resolution is also where this being a Screambox release works because the long-awaited horror elements finally turn up.

– This won’t come as a surprise to many, as I’m often hyper-critical of the length of movies, but Lizzie Lazarus is far too long, especially in a particularly meandering second act where nothing really happens besides some relationship development between Bethany and Eli. Which… I hate saying that characterization is a waste of time, but there needs to be something happening with it, and that is not really the case here.

A huge chunk of the middle of this flick is just… walking and talking. Talking and walking. Without any real action except for an animal attack that you never get to see. Honestly, Lizzie Lazarus would have worked better for me one of two ways: either as a play–it feels almost like a waste of a cinematic budget for a movie about two people just getting to know each other–or as a sixty minute or less outing. This goes back to my belief that a lot of great short films get stretched out to feature length when they desperately need not to be.

– I mentioned up above in the Ups that Lizzie Lazarus starts off with a song number, and it sets the tone for a movie that is never delivered upon. And I feel like that was a loss. I spent the first fifteen minutes of the film waiting for another musical bit or maybe some charming humor. But it never comes. I think I might have liked the mood of this more if it had followed through on what I expected.

OVERALL

Lizzie Lazarus is a perfectly fine flick that is all about the characterization of two different aspects of the grieving process as displayed by Bethany and Eli. The getting to know each other that they go through works, but at the same time, it all feels like so much killing time until we get to the climax at the tail end of the third act. It could have been cut down dramatically to improve the pacing issues as the two just bicker, then seem to get to like each other, then bicker again, then get to like each other again, et cetera.