By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Cast: Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Madison Brydges, Anna Arden, Miguel Anthony, Jenny Raven and Kiefer Sutherland.
Rating: Poor.
Niels Arden Oplev, director of the 2009 “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, brings “Flatliners” and this movie from beginning to end is a disaster.
The movie tells the story of Courtney (Ellen Page) a medical student who suffered a tragic accident that cost her sister´s life.
One day he spots his classmate Jamie (James Norton) and asks him to meet her in the basement of the campus.
He shows up where he will meet Sophia (Kiersey Clemons). Both Jamie and Sophia don´t know what is happening and Courtney asks them to stop her heart. Both are in shock but end up doing so.
Later students Ray (Diego Luna) and Marlo (Nina Dobrev) will join the experiment. All of them have their hearts stopped except Ray and begin to experience a series of events but at the same time episodes from the past will begin to hunt them.
Now the students will either have to accept the consequences of their actions or struggle with their inner demons, to the fact that can lead them to insanity.
From the beginning I heard and read that a remake of 1990`s “Flatliners” was going to happen, I expected the worst and I was not wrong.
The screenplay of this film is completely idiotic and has one of the worst dialogue I have heard in a film. Ben Riple`s job was to create another type of movie and I saw an exact carbon copy of the film directed by Joel Schumacher. The only difference was the name of the characters but that was pretty much it.
Niels Arden Oplev´s directing was all over the place, he directed the cast poorly as well as technical choices he made. It´s a shame that this happened to him since his version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was really good and hopefully this is a leaning lesson for him.
Kiefer Sutherland was totally wasted in this film and I felt that it was very disrespectful to an actor of his caliber. I understand why the filmmakers wanted to include him since he starred in the original film but this didn´t work and his character was not relevant to the story.
I think that actors like Ellen Page and Diego Luna, who not only are really talented but they were completely wasted and they could not save this piece of trash.
From beginning to end the movie was boring and had some of the fakest visual effects that I have seen in film. There were supposed to be scary but look cartoonish and didn´t work at all.
The 1990 movie is one that I really enjoyed and the concept was an interesting one. In fact I consider it a very well made movie with convincing performances by Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon.
I´ve mentioned before that remakes normally don´t work and this movie proves totally my point.
The reviews of this movie that have appeared online have trashed this movie from beginning to end and this movie deserves this type of criticism.
If you have seen the original movie please keep that way since this one is going to be a waste of your time and money.
“Flatliners” is one of the most idiotic movies I have seen and it`s one of the worst movies of this year.