So they went and remade the movie Flatliners… which, if you have to remake a movie, that’s a good one. The original Flatliners was a better idea than it was a film. Both movies have the same plot – medical students experiment with stopping their hearts so they can monitor and study what happens in near-death (or death-death) experiences. The problem with the original film is that the premise was just an excuse to have a generic haunting movie. A remake could actually do something original and interesting with the premise…. but, alas, this is a pretty straight remake, only it’s not as good and that was a short bar to hurl.
Yes, a group of med students once again stop their hearts and then get haunted by the ghosts of their past. Nothing interesting about the afterlife or what the brain really goes through in death is presented. We get some generic near death visions but mainly the movie just wants to be a flick where five people get haunted by their bad deeds. There’s nothing interesting going on in the movie and the scares are barely there and yet take too much film time (and are confusing as to whether they are happening or not).
I say the original was better but that’s only in that it had a moody, gothic look and feel… it was made when Joel Schumacher was still doing eerie and interesting films. This new flick is pretty much a straight forward generic horror movie. It’s also, apparently, meant to be a bit of a sequel since Kiefer Sutherland shows up as the head of the hospital… but there’s no suggestion or hint he’s the same dude from the first film. So it’s more stunt casting, I guess.
So, yeah, skip this film. If you need to see this story, a film with Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, and Oliver Platt may be better than Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, and Kiersey Clemons (not even sure who those last two are). But neither is a particular good film and both squander their interesting premise.
Score: 62