Plot

Attempting to discover what awaits us after death, med-school buddies Nelson Wright (Keifer Sutherland), Rachel Mannus (Julia Roberts), Joe Hurley (William Baldwin), David Labraccio (Kevin Bacon), and Randy Steckle (Oliver Platt) make a plan to temporarily “flatline” themselves, one at a time, stopping all brain activity, to briefly experience death before being resuscitated. A number of them are “killed” and brought back with vivid memories of their pasts, and the experiment is considered a success. But it seems they may have gotten more than they bargained for when their pasts literally come back to haunt them in the present day.

Memorable Lines

Nelson Wright: Today is a good day to die.

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Nelson Wright: Everything matters, everything we do matters.

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Nelson Wright: When my body temperature hits 86 degrees, you’re going to hit me with 200 Joules. The electric current will stop my heart. When the heart is dead, take the mask off… I’m going to draw 20 ccs. You handle the injections. When the EEG flatlines, the brain is dead. I’ll be exploring.

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Joe Hurley: Nelson, if you die, can I have your apartment?

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Nelson Wright: Philosophy failed. Religion failed. Now it’s up to the physical sciences.

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Thoughts from the HauntedHouses.com team

The premise of Flatliners is fairly simple. Several medical students purposely bring themselves to the point of death in order to find out exactly what the human brain does. It might sound like something bored students might do for a joke, but it ends up feeding into some very creepy subplots.

The subplots concern what the characters encounter during their death trips, and how the content of those trips intrude on their lives after they return.

Kiefer Sutherland shines in the leading role. One feels for him as the mystery of his past unfolds. As Kevin Bacon’s character searches for an old school peer whose life he made hell so that he can make amends, it becomes clearer what the heart of the film is about. As important as the past can be to us, it’s what we do with the present that matters most.

Another superior aspect of Flatliners is how it created its atmosphere without the use of expensive, elaborate visual effects. It didn’t not blow its budget in places where it didn’t need to. Much of what we see in the more surreal sequences is simply trick photography, or stock footage. Sometimes the simplest things are the best.

If there’s a problem with the film, it’s that it feels about ten minutes too short. The ending is more perfunctory than conclusive, as if Schumacher felt pressure to wrap the film up so that it could be brought to market in time. Fortunately, the two hours we do get are highly satisfactory, if not brilliant.

We give Flatliners a seven out of ten. It works well as a date flick or a late-night popcorn film, as well as being a good reminder that low-budget horror shows don’t have to be insults to the people who pay to see them.

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