By Maria Lewis
From the second a ‘new’ Flatliners was announced, people were scrambling to their keyboards to smash out ‘reboot dead on arrival’ and whatever other cardiac arrest related puns you can imagine. While the ’90s original was beloved as a semi-successful piece of accessible mainstream horror, it was not a perfect movie by any stretch. The film consisted of 60 per cent hair, 30 per cent gaudy lighting effects and 10 per cent various male cast members taking their turn to tell Julia Roberts she’s “so beautiful”. It wasn’t made on the cheap, with a $26M budget substantial even now let alone at the time. Making just over $60M in the US, it did fine: not a huge hit, not a flop. Aesthetics aside, it was a movie that succeeded in its premise, which was refreshingly original and convincingly acted out by its performers. They were young doctors and scientists obsessed with the discovery of the afterlife, with their ambition blinding them to the greater risks. The world the first film opened up was one that was ripe to explore further, deeper and harder beyond Flatliners’ tight one hour and fifty-five minute runtime (God bless the days when movies were frequently under two hours). Fast forward 27 years and that story is finally being expanded with a new cast, new director and new technology.
Let’s just get this out of the way from the start: the original Flatliners is of its time. When viewed in 1990, the year of its release, it was hard not to be wooed by the magnetic central cast of Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, Oliver Platt and William Baldwin. It was even harder not to be impressed by the stylistic direction of a then emerging Joel Schumacher in the director’s chair. Yet revisiting it now, it’s hard to see what Flatliners gave us besides the phrase “pussy marauder”. Like Sutherland and Roberts’ highly-publicised relationship, the movie’s legacy is a fizzer. The neon lighting design does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the suspense, the remainder being carried by small children wielding hockey sticks and hoodies. The story’s more interesting themes of life, death, and humanity’s ongoing drive to learn what happens when one passes to the ‘other side’ take a back seat to Schumacher’s more garish tendencies. The performers do a lot to elevate it and it’s their skill that is largely the reason people still remember this film. Yet Flatliners? Taking away the context of time, it ain’t a masterpiece.
That in and of itself should make it a prime target for a reboot or reimaging (of all the ‘re’ clarifiers, a remake is the only thing this isn’t). Yet the overwhelming consensus when the project was first announced – and the trailer first dropped – was ‘why do we need a new Flatliners movie?’ Well, the 2017 version would have the resources and technology to better fulfill the possibilities of what screenwriter and producer Peter Filardi’s idea of otherworldly could be. People’s doubts in the new Flatliners were valid; after all, the screenplay was from Ben Ripley and anyone who has written two Species sequels should be treated with suspicion. The flipside: Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev was behind the lens. That should fill viewers with hope, as he’s the same man who directed the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – a film so good and packed full of tension, David Fincher spent three hours unsuccessfully trying to recreate it. The end result, however, aligns itself among some of the biggest horror disappointments of the year.
In the same way Alien: Covenant made you realise ‘hey, Prometheus wasn’t actually that bad’, Flatliners makes you remember all the things you liked about the first one and gloss over its many problems. Ellen Page is essentially Sutherland’s character from the first film, although Sutherland pops up as a doctor in this movie as well. He’s playing his same role from the original, albeit much older, therefore making this a direct sequel except there is a) no acknowledgment to the events of 1990 b) he doesn’t acknowledge the events of 1990 and c) the filmmakers seem to want to ignore the events of 1990. Why have him in it if you’re taking a sharp left turn? That’s a great question and one that is never answered. Perhaps the biggest question of them all, however, is how in the ever-loving hell these characters were let near a hospital? Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons play a pack of aspiring doctors so shit at their jobs they manage to struggle with everything from putting on plastic gloves to performing CPR. You know, the basics. Diego Luna is seemingly the only competent one among them. Yes, killing yourself momentarily is stupid but you believed the five in the first film could do it because they were all exceptionally talented, bitingly brilliant and top of their class.
Like having an identity crisis at your 30th birthday bash, Flatliners’ biggest problem is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. In the original, the characters’ motivations for flatlining were always clear: at first it was just Kiefer Sutherland being crazy and attempting to push the brink. Then the others wanted to do the same, be the first, make a discovery. Schumacher was able to capture the competiveness between each of them as they started a bidding war over who could go the longest stretch of consecutive minutes. It was a dick-measuring contest through and through, which made them reckless in their pursuit of being the best. Eventually they went too far – crossed one line too many – and had to furiously backpedal to save their futures. It had heart: something Flatliners 2017 lacks so badly it’s almost ironic given the title. Page plays the only character with a genuine drive to flatline, hoping that it will allow her to see or connect with her deceased little sister. Yet when she comes back able to recall specific medical conditions, run 12 miles, play the piano and bake her grandmother’s bread recipe, it’s then and only then that her colleagues want to give it a shot. Let us be clear, remembering how to bake bread is not enough of a believable motivation for why someone would want to kill themselves, albeit temporarily. In some scenes flatlining is treated like a drug, with the characters spinning high off the effects and into sweaty dance montages, loud sex and food fights. There are references to “bad trips” and for a moment, flatlining is Limitless. Then there’s the wet, dead, long-haired little girls who keep popping up and flatlining a la The Ring. Throw in the phrase “demonic”, a supernatural death and a found footage scene … flatlining is now Paranormal Activity. That’s not even to mention the brief Final Destination phases the film continually dips in and out of. The rules were established early and frequently as to what flatlining is and what it does to you as a person. However, the new filmmakers either didn’t read those rules or didn’t care as they attempted to put this movie together like a bookshelf from IKEA without an Allen Key or instructions. It’s inevitable that with such shoddy construction, the whole thing is bound to collapse.
Maria Lewis is a journalist and author previously seen on SBS Viceland’s The Feed. She’s the presenter and producer of the Eff Yeah Film & Feminism podcast. Her debut novel Who’s Afraid? was released in 2016 with the sequel – Who’s Afraid Too? – out now. You can find her on Twitter @MovieMazz
