Flatliners
Flatliners
PG-13 | 29 September 2017 (USA)
Flatliners Trailers

Five medical students, hoping to understand the mystery of what lies beyond life, embark on a dangerous experiment. When their hearts are stopped for a short period of time, they have a near-death experience…

Reviews
empressoftheflames

With plenty of good looking people, sex and good camera work, Flatliners is a mediocre film that I don't regret watching. The movie starts off somewhat slow but kicks into gear in the second half. Ellen Page, Diego Luna and Nina Dobrev bring life to their characters (pun intended) while the others give flat performances. Instead of going full on horror, there is a balance between the supernatural and science aspects. It's also not one of those movies where the characters don't stand a chance like Final Destination. It didn't really scare me personally but I found it interesting.

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craigbee-57027

If you like horror and sci-fi films - then give this one a watch. A solid 7/10!

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ashley-lace

True to form the trailer for the movie enticed me into watching it. I very rarely write reviews unless I am sincerely demoralized, and now here I am. The plot line revolves around thinly veiled "traumas" for each character that range from very real saddening losses to very poor excuses for inconvenience. There's no plot, really, no character development worth mentioning, and the acting throughout is rather mediocre. Don't do it.

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eric262003

So here we have a reboot of movie that was never needed let alone a movie that came out in 1990 that even people back then hardly ever remembered. If only I was sitting next to Muppet characters Statler and Waldorf and we would have a ball hurling heckles at this abortion of film that is "Flatiners" just to tell Hollywood, we don't need anymore pointless reboots and to come up with original ideas instead.There's no point in rebooting a film that already bad before, so why now?Prior to watching this remake of "Flatliners" I saw the original 1990 Joel Schumacher movie to see how poorly executed this movie was by starring five medical students who experimentally kill each other to see what dimensions are in the hereafter. Cut to 2017, and all we get is the same exact rehashing without any new twists or angles or anything new to unravel during the supposed 27 years of scientific research into the unknown. The end result is lacks in anything engaging to say while the characters have little to be emphatic about. The script was penned by Ben Ripley with some credit given to Peter Filardi the original screenwriter decided to up the technological ante by adding an MRI machine for these students to experiment with while they like their audience go brain dead for five minutes. All for naught this MRI apparatus was there to inject modern machinery into the story to make us forget this is a reboot. This sets some alarming questions to boot. If these students are given access to the fully equipped abandoned section of hospital in the basement to conduct their bizarre experiments, are they not being under surveillance?The new group of medical students are an improvement from their predecessors of 1990 film being that there's three females and two males taking part in this research study instead of four guys and the token girl. The ethnic diversity is well established too as we have mixed bag of cultures instead of an all Caucasian roster we had in 1990. But the ages within these characters are truly put in question. I'll say that Marlo (Nina Dobrev) and Sophia (Kiersey Clemons) are just around the rightful age to play medical students. Courtney (Ellen Page) the mastermind behind this wack initiative is thirty, but still can pass off younger than her actual age. However, Jamie (James Norton) is quite long in the face for a thirty-two year old. And the maturity level of Diego Luna's Ray was passed due to his nine years as a firefighter in Houston has no significance to his line of work or experience. Sure there are late-bloomers in every field of work, but this experiment these students are conducting is geared towards a more youthful curiousness as opposed to more older people who should know better which is where the 1990 film worked because the cast (Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Billy Baldwin and Oliver Platt) and they looked the part as younger than the roster we have here.To keep up with new technological advances to the this practice, the MRI has little in terms of the plot and wears out its welcome rather quickly. So Courtney now discover she has the gift of baking bread from her grandmother's recipe book and could play piano without years of practice. Sophia can solve a Rubik's Cube in no time. But then things from their past comes back to haunt them as people they hurt return for revenge and now they must go out and repair the damage they've done. The 1990 original movie didn't make it seem haunting, but here in this reboot, they did the scares a little too over-the-top as an excuse to generate a reaction from the audience. Director Niels Arden Oplev seems to get under the skin of the five student doctors that their lives like so many others have been laden with guilt and that their quest for redemption has more if not grim meanings behind it.Even though this reboot takes a more haunting twist to the original, like its predecessor, it still fails to decide what genre it wants to be. Is there a supernatural entity lurking in all their near-death experiences or have they seen a new lease on life to make them softer? It's like it wants to be one genre but tries to be a bit of each (drama, thriller, horror with some bits of comedy). Hell, it even makes itself seem intelligent when it's anything but. They try to be cheeky by casting Kiefer Sutherland in the cast because he was in the original 1990 film as he plays the student teacher's doctor. But it turns out he's playing Dr. Barry Wolfson and not Dr. Nelson Wright from the 1990 movie. It would've been cool if the students found some nots from Dr. Wright's desk that were meant to be destroyed and taken advantage to it. or they were placed there to further quench his curious ways into seeking answers to other people's journey to afterlife for further research. There are many ways they could go with Sutherland's existence instead of just playing for laughs.There was just no reasons, purpose or motives as to why this film was green-lit in the first place. When Marlo said "We're beyond explanations as to why we're having these macabre manifestations brewing in their minds". Sorry I can't agree with you on that one. Hollywood needs to invest in new stories dying to be made and stop with the reboots. It's becoming too much.

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