Review of Flatliners (1990) by Julian T — 03 Dec 2011

This has grade A missed opportunity branded on its forehead. This could have been an amazing movie about life after death, but instead it just gets completely lost in trying to tell some sort of stupid ghost story/revenge from beyond the grave plot.

First and foremost in the films shortcomings are the inabillity for anyone to take Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin seriously as brilliant medical students. I wouldn't let any of these people take my temperature.

Bizzare and uninspired casting to be sure. The script is mediocre at best, and for a film catagorized under 'Horror/Thriller', it was neither horrific nor thrilling. Any excitement the film generates comes from the characters having trouble resusitating someone, which they eventually do.

After the 5th time of 'Oh no! He's not coming back! Oh wait... He's ok' it starts to get a little old. Schumacher never seems to recognize the most interesting parts of his own films, and this is no different.

Instead of actually exploring the idea of life after death, we instead follow these uninteresting characters into their past. Rambling, incohoherent and disjointed filmmaking at its finest. A few redeeming qualities like Oliver Platt and interesting dream/death sequences save this from being a total bomb, but it isn't far off.