The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
Green Book
Widows
The Walking Dead
Log in with Facebook
OR
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango.
Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password.
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (44) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (23) | DVD (3)
Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon all bring conviction to these scenes, and William Baldwin, as the most irresponsible of the students, continues to suggest an electric screen presence that rivals his brother Alec.
Except for the performances by Roberts and Bacon, which occasionally redeem it, Flatliners is exasperating, a compelling concept unfulfilled.
All I remember is that, just before I came to, there was a sudden burst of brightness. At last the movie was over, and someone had turned on the lights in the theater.
The movie's problem, like many others recently, is that it isn't any deeper, dramatically or psychologically, than its own trailer. It is the trailer: the long version.
It`s much to Schumacher's credit that Flatliners, for all of its crazy excess, does not turn into camp. Despite two or three bad laughs, the picture retains a basic conviction.
We're supposed to think, ''Gee, will they make it back?!'' By the third or fourth close call, we're not exactly sweating.
An intriguing premise in search of a compelling movie...
'90s thriller about near-death experiences is very violent.
Flatliners is moderately entertaining hocum at times, when it doesn't reach too far. Roberts is the best of the adequate bunch -- only her fans should make this a must-see.
Schumacher puts more flash than flesh on the story, but still manages to deliver the expected chills with cool efficiency as the students' extracurricular experiments take a sinister turn.
Young medical students intentionally kill and resuscitate each other, thereby gaining knowledge of the afterlife, which turns out to look a lot like... MTV.
The death trips are part travelogue, part bad dream, and they quickly start to pall with the same scene basically being repeated five times.
"Med students explore to see what might lie beyond death" might be the advertisement, but what one gets is the old bait-and-switch. Instead of that exploration we get pseudo-Freudian analysis delivered by runway cute actors. What happens after death? One's perm still looks good, baby ... and Zoolander pout. Filmed in Chicago.
Super Reviewer
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.
5 Medical Students try to make history and discover once and for all if there is life after death. Flatliners is chilling to its core as one by one we follow the trainee doctors 'go under' and flatline for a few seconds longer each time. Kiefer Sutherland plays the crazed mastermind behind their plans and as the first flatliner to return finds that despite the overall feeling that his indescribable experience was positive, hes brought something back with him. As the students try to better each other for flat-lining longer we gradually see the effects of life after life after death become more strained as their sins from the past haunt them further and effecting their lives with more serious intent. Scared me senseless as a kid and still pushes all the right buttons nowadays. Kevin Bacon is the perfect balance to Sutherland's tornado of a character along with good supports from Julia Roberts and William Baldwin (Not Alec, Stephen or that bloke from Coronation Street). "Philosophy failed. Religion failed. Now it's up to the physical sciences. "
There are no approved quotes yet for this movie.
View All