Feb 102017
 
one reel

A group of medical students—weird Courtney (Ellen Page), rich-kid Jamie (James Norton), easily-freaked Sophia (Kiersey Clemons), cute and capable Marlo (Nina Dobrev), and superior doc Ray (Diego Luna)—stop their hearts to have near death experiences. This super-charges their brains after they are revived, but then they begin having frightening hallucinations. Have they brought something back, cracked open a mystic door, or damaged their psychological health?

I’ve often said that it’s better to remake a weak movie than a strong one, so I’ll give the filmmakers of 2017’s Flatliners credit in that respect. Of course the idea is not to make a still weaker movie. The original did very little with its potentially interesting premise. This one does less.

The five actors are appealing enough—their characters less so, but they are functional if the story could do the heavy lifting. But the story just flops about. The final question in my description of the film is the key to Flatliners’ failure: Have they brought something back, cracked open a mystic door, or damaged their psychological health? It’s best if we know by the closing credits, and the film better know the answer long before that, but there is no revelations here. One by one our team members, while alone, find themselves in dark places getting visions connected to some not-that-interesting bad thing they’d done. Since none of it is explained, none of it means anything. They just see scary stuff and then chat about it to no purpose. That is all that happens for two-thirds of the film. Perhaps if this was a character study, but that would require more than the surface level we’re given of these five people.

Flatliners has nothing to say and no stylish way of saying it. I didn’t care about anything happening and just wanted it to be over. There are worse horror film out there—if this is a horror film—and worse films released in 2017, but this is one of the most pointless ones.