Flatliners

Overview

"Today is a good day to die," announced Kiefer Sutherland in Flatliners circa 1990. The film's opening line was moody and cheesy all at once, and set the scene for the blend of sci-fi and horror to follow. Before he was battling terrorists as Jack Bauer, a blonde-locked Sutherland played a medical student convinced that he could kill himself, find out what happens next, come back to life and get famous. Even with Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon among the cast, the final product was far from memorable.

Both Sutherland and that line of dialogue pop up in the new remake, the latest Hollywood rehash no one was dying for. His involvement is amusing, though not intentionally so, while the repeated phrase feels as routine and obligatory as it inescapably is. If only the entire movie had fallen into the first category, rather than the second. With director Niels Arden Oplev (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and writer Ben Ripley (Source Code) taking an average-at-best flick from almost 30 years ago, ditching the '90s brooding, ramping up the backstory and exposition, and throwing in some raucous party scenes because, hey, it's 2017, it was never going to be a good day for this film.

This time around, Ellen Page's Courtney takes centre stage. While she says her obsession with near-death experiences is all in the name of science, an introductory car crash makes her personal motivations clear. Stressed-out classmate Sophia (Kiersey Clemons) and ladies' man Jamie (James Norton) are initially tricked into helping, but prove eager to follow in her footsteps when she returns with a better memory, a desire to knock down walls, some nifty piano playing skills and a need to bake bread. Yes, really. Ray (Diego Luna) only stumbles across the heart-stopping scheme when things go wrong, and Marlo (Nina Dobrev) literally follows him into the hospital's basement. But soon they're caught up in things as well.

It's a silly premise, with the group forced to face some very obvious consequences. Dying isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when it's accompanied by haunting reminders about their various sins. Ripley's script cares not for surprises, and Oplev shows the same lack of concern for anything other than going through the motions. Even if you haven't seen the original Flatliners, if you've seen any other spooky flick that flirts with shuffling off this mortal coil, prepare yourself for a journey into been-there, done-that territory.

While it's easy to decry the growing trend towards pointless remakes, Flatliners isn't terrible just because it needlessly revives a forgettable film from a bygone era. Likewise, it'd be easy to bemoan the fact that such a talented cast has been saddled with such crumby material, but wasting Page, Clemons and Luna in particular isn't the movie's main problem. None of that helps, but the killer jolt is the film's lack of energy. While its characters take a zap to the heart to step into the afterlife, Flatliners doesn't have a pulse to begin with. Flat and bland in style, plot and emotion, it's a work completely devoid of interest and scares as a result. The only thing that stands out in Luna's man-bun — and even it has nothing on Bacon's mullet in the original.