★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
In a revelation as inevitable as the “dead on arrival” gags accompanying its reviews, this sequel to Joel Schumacher’s 1990 thriller is as pointless as it is sterile. Five medical students become obsessed with triggering their own near-deaths in attempts to capture evidence of the afterlife. After initial highs and cognitive awakenings, the group find themselves hunted by the ghosts of their individual pasts.
The post-flatline powers exhibit themselves in trust fund hunk Jamie (James Norton) as increased proficiency in medical practices, whilst in the three lead women (Ellen Page, Nina Dobrev and Kiersey Clemons) as a sudden desire to get into Jamie and Ray's (Diego Luna) pants. Though they each have their own unique traumas to shape the apparitions, increasingly tiresome jump-scares and dark corridors morph them all into interchangeable quivering wrecks by the end. Courtney (Page) at least has some of her character fleshed out (the opening sequence clues us into the revelation she withholds from her peers, so they’ll indulge her experiment), but it’s all for nothing come the final act.
Luna plays the token sceptic, and is immediately engaging to the point that he almost pulls the whole enterprise together, though his hairstyle (perhaps in unspoken homage to the original’s fabulous array of wild wigs) is a choice almost as poor as his recent decision to work with Woody Allen.
A more befuddling decision is made by the filmmakers to include Kiefer Sutherland, reprising his role from the original as the students’ mentor. Again, it’s all for naught: never does he factor into their decision to explore flatlining, investigate them, or even deliver a knowing sermon. It’s the screenwriters showing they care enough to draw Sutherland back, but not quite enough to give him anything to do, nor to provide any other tangible connections to the first film, narratively or visually. Religious imagery and reveries make way for insipid sob stories, and the smoky streets and dark architecture are swapped out for crisp surfaces and vapid digital backdrops.
All this heavy comparison might fool you into thinking I hold the first Flatliners in high esteem. For the record; I don’t. Any interesting concepts are rapidly overridden by hammy performances and Schumacher’s total reliance on imagery over intelligence. This new iteration can barely pretend to offer the former, exhibiting drama as slack as its characters, living or dead.
