Mediocre remake dies on the table
Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton Dead on arrival. FOR a movie that’s not all that well remembered, the 1990 supernatural thriller Flatliners had a pretty nifty hook.
A group of ambitious medical students eager to push the boundaries lower their body temperatures and stop their hearts then resuscitate one another to investigate what actually happens after death — only to find they’ve each brought something sinister back from the other side.
More than 2½ decades later, the movie is memorable only for its cast of hot young things of the early ’90s (with Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts in the lead roles) and director Joel Schumacher’s visual flourishes.
Therefore, the announcement of a remake prompted a bit of interest — would a 2017 version make the most of the concept?
The short answer: nope. Not only does this moribund version of the story fail to explore its possibilities, it doesn’t even have the slickness of the original.
And its cast, while competent enough, can’t generate any interest in the exploits of the characters.
Swedish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev (the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) goes through the motions of trying to get a rise out of the audience with shopworn spookiness — to no avail.
Indeed, the scariest things about Flatliners is how utterly incapable it is of generating any sensation at all. It’s a general anaesthetic of a film.
The five medical students this time around have the usual bunch of cliched traits — Courtney (Ellen Page) is driven, Ray (Diego Luna) principled, Marlo (Nina Dobrev) an overachiever, Sophia (Kiersey Clemons) stressed and Jamie (James Norton) a carefree playboy.
With Courtney leading the charge, they meet in the deserted but improbably well-appointed wing of a local hospital to conduct their “flatlining” experiments, each of them spending longer in the great beyond than the last.
At first, everything seems great — they return from the dead feeling euphoric.
But it soon becomes apparent the guilty consciences of these flatliners have accompanied them back, intent on making them pay for their sins.
The fact that these spectres of past misdeeds take the form of creepy children, pale, sad-eyed girls or simply shadows on the wall should give you some indication of how utterly terrifying Flatliners is. (That is to say, not at all.)
As a result, enduring this thoroughly drab excuse for a thriller only inspires one thought — that the original Flatliners should have come with a donot-resuscitate order. America through the eyes of great author and activist James Baldwin. (M, Pivotonian)