Despite its occasional lapses into silly self-consciousness, Flatliners is one of the most intriguing and well-constructed supernatural thrillers of the 1990s. A group of brilliant medical students decide to literally play with life and death. They put themselves in suspended animation, electronically inducing a near-deathlike state and then pulling out of it at the last possible moment. Things get hairy when one of the students (Kiefer Sutherland) becomes obsessed with the notion of really
dying, the better to experience the Afterlife before being revived--if he can be revived. In her first dramatic starring role (playing a sensitive young lady on a misguided guilt trip), Julia Roberts is very, very good--completely bereft of movie-star mannerisms. Audiences flocked to see Flatliners back in 1990 due to the highly publicized off-screen romance between Roberts and Sutherland. Oh, yes: Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin are in the picture, too. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
A horrible, dumb movie that wastes the time of the good actors involved. This should have been an early indication that Joel Schumacher needed to be stopped.
This mild horror thriller about a couple of medicine students who are trying to find the threshold between life and death did not age very well. There is a lot of neon light, fog machines and late 80s sounds. That does make for a very unique atmosphere and is a prime example of the films of that era. The story itself
is pretty interesting and has its gloomy and wonderfully mysterious moments, in the end we all wonder what's happening after death. This movie's answer may be a bit naive, but is told in a enthralling way. People can say about Schumacher what they want, but given a decent script the man can film compelling tales. This is no exception and still works for a few goosebumps over Halloween.
A film I really feel as though I should have watched sooner. The idea seems so genius to me I don't know why it took me this long to watch it. Flatliners focuses on a bunch of medical students that briefly kill themselves and bring themselves back to life in order to explore the afterlife. However, they each bring back
a sin from their past that now haunts them. The idea of experimenting with death is a fascinating one, and I feel like they could have done more with it. Perhaps exploring the nature of time, and mortality itself. Instead we get a very heavy handed anti-bullying message. Quite what near death experiences and past sins have in common I'm not sure. Had the characters been classified as terminally ill and wanted to make a mends themselves, that I could understand. Instead, as we see four characters do the experiment, it becomes very repetitive, and after Bacon comes to peace with his past it doesn't seem all that dangerous. I loved theearly 90's feel, and some of the bizarre visuals. Why exactly is the medical school in a cathedral or something? Why does Kevin Bacon abseil down a wall when he leaves school? A film where I would actually welcome a remake, as long at it took the core idea and explored it in a different way.
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