Flatliners (2017)

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  TheMovieDiorama

  5 / 10

  Flatliners delivers an interesting concept, but slowly declines into the hellish battleground that is commonly known as: clichés. Having never watched the Joel Schumacher original, the trailer immediately caught my interest. Ellen Page, Diego Luna, surreal visions, afterlife...the recipe for a thrilling flick was there. Whilst this does not deserve the harsh criticism that it has received, it's still not great either. Essentially five medical students run experiments to find out what happens to our brain activity when we die. But then being brought back to life has resulted in their past haunting them. And so we have ourselves a tale of forgiveness. Owning up to our sins and not just forgiving other people, but forgiving yourselves. Somehow, if you die and come back to life...your past mistakes will come to murder you. That is where the stupidity resides in this plot. The third act was absurdly generic and negated the interesting medical premise that the first act built up! I don't need tame jump scares and creepy imagery to keep me thrilled! No. Give me the pseudo-science ideas and concepts, that is what intrigued me. Or if we look deeper into the story, is it actually a metaphor for the ridiculous stress that medical student go under? If this was directed by Darren Aronofsky, then maybe. But it's not. Clichéd plot aside, I found the characters to be relatable and found their interactions to be natural. A close friendship between the group, however I did find some of the love interests to be forced and the fact they all did something terrible was such a plot convenience. James Norton was probably the best performance, everyone else just played themselves. Ellen Page acts the same like in every other film (yet somehow I still warm to her...) and I wanted more from Diego Luna. I have to say the sound editing was pretty good. Liked the flatline noise mixing in with the musical score, was a nice touch. But...not enough to save this from mediocrity. An intelligent first act, a thrilling second act and a damn clichéd third act. Not utterly terrible, but not amazing.

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