Ropey remake dies on its feet
While certain elements have aged badly – namely the hairstyles and clothing – the original Flatliners was a perfectly watchable slice of sci-fihorror.
The 1990 release would never come close to making any top ten lists in either genre, but it’s always hard to ignore when channel-hopping and seeing it’s on Freeview TV for about the fourth time in six months.
Potential, then, for a remake to improve upon its predecessor, not least because of the technological advances in both real-world science and the art of movie-making.
The basic premise remains the same as writers Peter Filardi and Ben Ripley take an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach by once again presenting a story of a group of young medical students who trigger near-death experiences by stopping their hearts for a short time in an attempt to discover if there is life after death.
But whereas the original had acting heavyweights Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and Oliver Platt, here we get the lead girl from The Vampire Diaries (Nina Dobrev), Grantchester’s James Norton and Ellen Page in her, small turn in X-men: Days of Future Past apart, first mainstream role since 2010’s Inception.
Perhaps I’m being a little harsh as the cast do a decent enough job, and some could go on to develop careers making them worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Roberts and Bacon.
However, either way, they are badly let down by perfunctory directing from Dane Neils Arden Oplev, who follows up his fine work on the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with another mediocre English language flick after 2013’s forgettable Dead Man Down.
The script is full of predictable developments which could have been compensated for by vibrant visuals, spooky sound design and electric editing.
Sadly Oplev and his behind-the-camera team fail to elevate the familiar goings-on and while Flatliners 1990 knew its limitations and opted for scares over science, this reboot takes itself far too seriously and bombards us with religious themes and imagery that made me wonder if Oplev had taken inspiration from Mel Gibson’s climax to Hacksaw Ridge.
In what feels like little more than stunt casting and an ineffective effort to tie in events with the original, Sutherland returns but is given so little to work with he could have literally phoned in his performance.
The reboot’s biggest flaw, though? It’s just not scary. At all. There aren’t even any notable jump scares, which even some of the worst horror movies released in the last decade have utilised to evoke at least mild discomfort.
As a result, this has to go down as another disappointment to add to the ever-growing pile of inferior horror remakes.
While not as downright awful as the Prom Night, Wicker Man and Psycho re-do’s, Flatliners 2017 has all the life sucked out of it.