The Lazarus Effect—the creepy Olivia Wilde vehicle hitting theaters this weekend—is joining a proud horror tradition. And no, we're not just talking about the growing Fright Night coffers of Blumhouse Productions, which is responsible for about 1,000 scary movies annually, including this one. No, no. We're talking about the institution known as reanimation horror.

Reanimation horror is not the most populated of sub-genres. We've surely had more cabins in the woods, unbeatable super killers, and haunted houses. But reanimation has a special place in our hearts thanks to its scientific roots. Sure, it's all ridiculous science with little to no connection to reality, but there are still a lot more lab coats than in your standard-issue slasher. And if there's one thing we wish there were more of in horror flicks, it's lab coats.

And while it might be a small subset, the reanimation genre also comes complete with its own recurring themes and concepts—and what is any horror movie if not an assemblage of familiar tropes arranged to be surprisingly frightening when presented in just the right way? Scary movies aren't about new ideas, necessarily. They're about taking the good old ones and giving them a novel polish. We watched a lot of reanimation movies to gear up for Lazarus (hey, we're nothing if not thorough), and in the process unearthed the crucial elements of the sub-genre. Here are the narrative devices any movie should have to join the fraternity of the formerly dead.

The Mad Scientist

This is most obvious of reanimation tropes, since you can't raise or reassemble the dead without at least one scientist either too smart or too arrogant for their own good—preferably both. (Except in the case of the Living Dead girl. Catherine Valmont—played by Françoise Blanchard—came back to life after some heinous chemicals were spilled on her corpse, but that's a rare exception.) Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) filled the role in The Brain That Wouldn't Die in 1962. We got two in 1990 with Jeffrey (James Lorinz) in Frankenhooker and Nelson (Kiefer Sutherland) in Flatliners. There are technically a group of revival scientists in The Lazarus Effect, but the one most obviously in the Mad Scientist lab coat is Frank (Mark Duplass). And then, of course, we have the mad king of body reconstituting maestros: Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), aka The Re-Animator himself, a man purely defined by his lack of empathy and desire to demote God from his status as One True Creator. Out of respect, though, we also have to give it up for Henry Frankenstein, who lit the fires of assembling dead people parts to create new life decades before even Dr. West could carry the torch. Without a scientist at the helm, you're likely talking resurrection, which is fun and stuff, but not quite reanimation territory.

Messiah Complex

For those who've been remiss in their Bible study of late, Lazarus was a pious man who Jesus resurrected four days after his death, proclaiming before his miracle: "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die." And if you look closely enough in the trailer for Lazarus Effect you can even catch a shout out to that quote found in John 11:25-26.

However, since imbuing the dead with life is exclusively Jesus territory any human attempt at it is definitively blasphemous; therefore, a palpable God complex plays a crucial role in reanimation movies. In Bride of Re-Animator, Dr. West made it very clear where test tube jockeys like him stand in the heretic hierarchy, "Blasphemy? Before what? God? A God repulsed by the miserable humanity he created in his own image? I will not be shackled by the failures of your God! The only blasphemy is to wallow in insignificance!"

And while Dr. West is clearly the most explicitly in opposition to The Creator, in almost every reanimation movie there's the crucial moment where someone protests "This isn't right! This is human life we're messing with!" This voice of reason is always ignored, but the implication is "You're interfering with something you don't understand (i.e. The Will Of God)." And the adverse effects of dabbling in death reversal can make believers out of even the most steeled atheists, like we saw with Kevin Bacon's character David Labraccio in Flatliners when he screamed an apology to the Lord he previously had no regard for. You don't have to believe in him. You can even actively snub him, but when it comes to reanimation horror, the King of Kings is always standing just around the corner.

Doing It All for My Baby

Meatloaf once said he would do anything for love, but he wouldn't do that. We never did find out what that was, but after researching this project thoroughly we're reasonably confident he's talking about that ultimate scientific taboo: bringing his beloved back from the dead. Fortunately for all the lovers out there, romance still lives on in the soul of Huey Lewis and the News. See, Lewis understood that when you're truly devoted to someone, not even death should keep you apart, as evidenced by the video for "Doing It All For My Baby."

Sure, Frankenstein is a little more animation than reanimation, but it's the great grandfather of the genre in so many ways. And as demonstrated by The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Frankenhooker, Huey Lewis himself, and the brides of both Frankenstein and the Re-Animator, there's no better reason to go raising the dead than true love. In the The Lazarus Effect, it's no different. Frank can't bear to go on without his partner in life and medical school so he escalates his Lazarus serum experiments to the human trials phase after his girlfriend Zoe (Wilde) dies in the process of bringing a dog back to life. But like so many before him, Frank is about to realize that the person you lost is not always the person you bring back from beyond.

Reap What You Sow

Even in the name of love, all that encroaching on God’s dominion doesn’t go over well. So whether you’re an atheist or a devout Christian, there will be in-film consequences for meddling with the natural order. In the case of Lazarus, it looks like Zoe has brought hell back to this dimension with her, and whatever piggy-backed on her journey home is going to make her friends pay for their trespasses into the dark side.

And even if God doesn't smite you, reanimating someone is always a self-punishing act anyway. The well-meaning suburban scientist from Frankenhooker thought he was doing good by bringing his fiancé back to life after a tragic remote control lawn mowing accident, but when you piece a girl together from parts of exploded prostitutes, there's a chance she'll end up as an aggressive bionic streetwalker instead. It's a hazard of the trade.

But even the poor Frankenhooker, Elizabeth Shelley (played with commitment by *Penthouse'*s 1987 Pet of The Year, Patty Mullen), got off light compared to Franken-Meg in Bride of Re-Animator. Rejected by her creator, she was left to rip out her own heart while screaming, "What do you want from me??" at her former lover.

And while Producer Jason Blum told Entertainment Weekly that Lazarus is definitely a "hat-tip" to Flatliners, it's actually a pretty even mashup of that and The Brain That Wouldn't Die: A collective of death-chasing doctors lead towards oblivion by a single scientist bent on saving the life of his lost love by using ethically dubious means, only to find that a malevolent being is all that remains when she's snatched back from the clutches of death. Virginia Leith as "Jan in the Pan" (her actual credit) might as well cameo in the Lazarus trailer when she says, "Horror has its ultimate, and I am that."

Fortunately for us horror movie mongers out there, decades of cinematic schooling have still not detoured on-screen scientists from dabbling in the medical equivalent of the dark arts. (Hell, even witches understand that that shit is dangerous!) And so we will keep benefiting from the errors of their ways, welcoming entry after entry into the reanimation hall of heroes. And no matter what happens in The Lazarus Effect, we'll support any serum that keeps Olivia Wilde on screen longer than the first 30 minutes of a movie.