It’s Got a Really Bad Arrhythmia
There is a point during Flatliners where one of the main characters, Jamie played by James Norton, mentions that he has taken LSD before and that crazy things, he didn’t sleep for three days, also happened to him. He says this comparing the things that happen to the ‘flatliners’ to his experience of him taking LSD one time. This is the problem with Flatliners, you could’ve replaced the whole flatlining part with taking some bad drugs.
Flatliners follows the story of five medical students who try out the idea of flatlining and coming back to life. This idea of flatlining comes from the mind of Courtney, Ellen Page, leader of the flatliners as she is obsessed with what happens in the afterlife because she accidentally killed her little sister in a car crash. After the group takes their turns flatlining they each experience strange happens that relate to the things they are each guilty of.
So the people they’ve betrayed or done wrong are now out to kill them, a classic horror idea was thrown into a film with quite a ridiculous yes you will get expelled and caught idea that you as a viewer always think is stupid in the first place. My own problem with the film is probably on a more higher plane, ironic, than most as two characters have accidentally killed someone and therefore the afterlife ghost thingys are trying to kill them. Two other characters, however, haven’t killed anyone and instead, they just feel a bit guilty yet the afterlife people who they haven’t killed are trying to kill them anyway. This problem makes half of the characters problems feel a little redundant as one might just think “well they don’t deserve to die for that, maybe a punishment but it’s not death”. In a film where the concept is ridiculous and the horror value is minimal, it isn’t probably the best idea to throw in such a simple question of how would one be punished for particular crimes. One character almost dies because they actually killed someone and the other almost dies because they were a mean bully, it just doesn’t add up well enough.
Flatliners pushes passed the science of the whole concept of flatliners, basically, Ellen Page is just curious about the afterlife and is crazy enough to do something about it unlike the rest of us who just sit ideally by wondering….shame on us. Instead is questions what I think is a more heaven and hell situation where if you’ve done something wrong then you either have to repent your sins or pay the price, a concept that better done in NBC’s new hit show The Good Place which I just started watching and is probably a better use of your time.
Our hero of this slightly in shambles film, that has a scene where a girl just moves across the screen like an animation in powerpoint, is Ray, played by the great Diego Luna. Ray is basically us as he stands throughout the whole film saying “this is crazy” or “I’ll have no part of this” but ends up joining in any way because like us he just has to because its there happening. The film doesn’t use its situation well enough to single Ray out as the only one with the scientific/logical sense as perhaps the film should’ve been that he found a group of flatliners and he had to choose whether to help or stop them. Instead, he just tries to help people and literally be the only one in the room who is clearly going to be a smart and useful doctor.
Flatliners, a word that is annoying to type, isn’t all bad as sometimes it’ll have a bit of a good scare or it rarely has some good character moments mixed in with the friendship of the flatliners group. The film isn’t really flatlining but has a really bad arrhythmia that makes it unable to be strong and perhaps this is due to the lack of exploring the science and moral ideas behind flatlining and the afterlife, something that would’ve definitely come up in say a Christopher Nolan version of Flatliners. Flatliners has desperate box office studio making all over it and if the film’s ideas are real then the, unfortunately, the punishment will be unfair for them in the afterlife because do one bad thing wrong in your whole life and you may as well be dead apparently…I U-turn when I’m not supposed to sooo see you in another life, if there is one. Who knows the film didn’t even get that far.