Flatliners (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Follow Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 109 minutes

Flatliners (Blu-ray) – Movie Review

Site Score
5.8
Good: Acting, Visuals
Bad: Too sterile, A bit bland
User Score
5.3
(3 votes)
Click to vote
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Rating: 5.3/10 (3 votes cast)

The last few years it feels like Hollywood has been milked dry when it comes to innovative and creative ideas. The newest trend is to either remake old classics, or to suddenly write a sequel for them after several decades, with a new cast, and a subtle wink to the old cast, making them somewhat less important to the story, allowing the newcomers to breathe new life into the story, granting it to continue and become something big once again. Flatliners is the first, as this 2017 rendition is a remake of the original 1990 movie, with an updated cast, new visuals and a similar storyline. Entertaining to a certain extent, but it ends up being somewhat bland.

Flatliners

The movie starts off with a dramatic scene involving Courtney (Ellen Page) driving with her sister Tessa (Madison Brydges) but Courtney is distracted and doesn’t see the truck blocking the bridge in front of her. Due to her late reaction, she crashes, flies over the rails, and the car ends up in the water. Courtney makes it out alive, but it’s clear that Tessa doesn’t. This is pretty much the interlude of things to come, as we are then taken ten years into the future, where Courtney is a med school student, who is very much interested in the afterlife, perhaps even more than anything else that has to do with medicine. Soon after she brings in Jamie (James Norton), the flamboyant student who is more into partying, and Sophia (Kiersey Clemons), who is insecure and has to do a lot more studying than the rest, into her plan. Courtney plans on stopping her heart for a minute, and she needs the rest to help her come back after said minute. Of course things go wrong, and they ask Ray (Diego Luna), the more experienced and serious student to help them out when things don’t go according to plan. Only minutes later Marlo (Nina Dobrev) also arrives on the scene, as she followed Ray when he stormed out.

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From here on out it’s all about ‘flatlining’, as Courtney comes back and seemingly has her brain rewired to remember items, to be an even better student, and to be overall happier with her life. Of course Courtney failed to mention that her afterlife experience wasn’t all that positive, and before she knows it, the others, safe for one, have also flatlined, and they start seeing things that come back to haunt them. It seems that something is trying to tell them they shouldn’t mess with the afterlife in such a casual fashion, and things might get a bit rough from here on out.

While the flow of the movie isn’t too slow and does have its surprises along the way, most of it ends up being predictable and somewhat sterile compared to the original movie. In the first film things appeared more raw, grittier and somewhat more dirty, creating a certain edge to the movie. Of course, seeing the students are all attending med school, it’s only natural to keep things clean and sterile, but also the world surrounding them feels a bit too clean, too sterile and perhaps a tad on the unnatural side when looking how things are in reality. Nonetheless, the flow is decent, the twists and turns sometimes get you by surprise, but overall you can see most things happening from a mile away.

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The cast is certainly pleasant to look at, and they do their best in this clean adaptation of the original movie, and thus cast-wise there is nothing more to be said than they worked with the limited resources at hand and they did so accordingly and in a great fashion. It’s fun however to see Kiefer Sutherland make an appearance in this film, as he was one of the key characters in the original movie.

While the movie may somewhat miss its mark, the special features on the Blu-ray edition are rather interesting nonetheless. While most of the snippets could be considered as a big making of sequence, with added deleted scenes, there are a few interesting insights to be seen by the cast and people behind the movie. It’s fun to see the cast ponder about if they would truly consider to be ‘flatlined’ or not.

Conclusion

Flatliners is a decent attempt of remaking a movie that didn’t really need to be remade. While it’s fun to see this movie being bombarded in the age of ever advancing medical technology, with a relevant and fun to look at cast, and newer effects, it feels a bit like a lukewarm rendition of the original film. This movie is filled with good intentions, but it falls flat on its behind in terms of originality, excitement and it lacks what the original had to surprise us. Even those who haven’t watched the first and original work, are probably better off watching the now retro first movie. That being said, this one is certainly worth a watch, but not really worth adding to your collection.

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Rating: 5.3/10 (3 votes cast)
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Flatliners (Blu-ray) - Movie Review, 5.3 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Ibuki


Aspiring ninja.

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