*Premise spoilers*
*Note: This movie was a pre-transition role for Elliot Page. I’ll use he/him pronouns when I’m talking about Page and she/her pronouns when I’m talking about his character Courtney.*
This is a remake of a film I haven’t seen, though I’ve heard Diego Luna talk about it in an interview promoting this movie. I don’t know if the original Flatliners is good, how closely the remake hews to the original vs. doing its own thing, or how the remake stacks up in comparison. I’m looking at it in a vacuum, and on that level, I’d say it’s a meh movie that I enjoyed a bit more than I expected to.
A group of med students, led by Courtney, begin conducting highly unethical “experiments” on what happens to the brain during a near-death experience. One by one, they hook themselves up to an MRI before temporarily stopping their heart, counting on the others to revive them. But as they relish the heady experience of flatlining, it quickly becomes clear that they may have opened a door that was better left closed.
I don’t watch a lot of horror, so I’m ill-equipped to get too definitive about the film’s quality. It strikes me as below average but serviceable, but fans of the genre might disagree on that in either direction. Personally, I find the notion of flatlining itself more interesting, albeit kind of corny. It begins as an experiment (with ulterior motives!) and becomes a way for the highly competitive med students to gain an edge by “rewiring” their brain, with a side of “unorthodox and wildly ill-advised party drug” analogue. They’re chasing the thrill and the feeling of flatlining, and they see how their friends who have already flatlined are different now on rounds. When they start seeing creepy images and worry that their sins are coming back to haunt them, it feels more cookie-cutter to me.
I’d say the film is mainly an ensemble centered around the five med students who get involved in the flatline experiments. While Elliot Page definitely would’ve been one of the bigger names in the main cast at the time, and his character Courtney is the one who initially enlists the others for the experiments, it’s not a movie about “Courtney and co.”—each of them is given space for their own perspective and their own struggles, which I like. Courtney pitches this to her classmates as being about scientific breakthroughs and distinguishing themselves from the pack, but in truth, she’s been obsessed with death ever since a traumatic accident some years earlier.
The others, meanwhile, become interested in trying flatlining when they see how her mental acuity seems to sharpen after her experience. I knew I recognized James Norton, and looking at his IMDb, I think it must’ve been from Belle. He plays Jamie, a rich party boy who doesn’t take his schooling very seriously and wants a shortcut to succeed. Kiersey Clemons (recently Iris West in the DCEU) plays the perpetually stressed Sofia, who’s snowed under with the demands of the program and desperately wants something to help her keep her head above water. Nina Dobrev plays Marlo, who’s determined and competitive with her classmates, wanting to give herself an edge. The film also features Kiefer Sutherland, who was in the original Flatliners, in a supporting role as one of the chief doctors overseeing the students.
Diego Luna plays Ray, the fifth med student and the one person in the group who isn’t on board with flatlining. He’s pulled into the secret when Sofia and Jamie struggle to revive Courtney after her flatline, and after that, he’s mostly there to keep the others from killing themselves. In the first half of the film, he repeatedly tries to talk them out of it, but he gradually gets drawn into things despite not wanting to do it himself.
I like Ray. He’s older than the rest of his classmates and has more life experience than them, which sort of positions him as the exasperated older brother to the reckless kids. He has a bit of a chip on his shoulder because he’s had to work hard to get where he is, compared to some of his richer classmates who are used to getting things handed to them. He’s focused and argumentative—as I said, he repeatedly tries to talk some sense into the others and caution them against flatlining, at point out exclaiming, “You think this makes you better, Sofia? This makes you dead!” He also has a strong pragmatic streak. As the creepy stuff starts going down, he’s the one who insists there must be a logical explanation, and when the others panic while trying to revive a classmate, he remains focused on the concrete steps of what they can do. When Marlo urges, “Come on, Jamie, wake up!”, Ray flatly responds, “He can’t hear you.” He’s incredibly take-charge during the flatline scenes, keeping his head while the others sometimes freeze up or flail.
Recommend?
In General – Eh, a soft maybe. It’s a decent-ish movie, if fairly cliched in the second half.
Diego Luna – I might. This isn’t a hugely demanding role—other than the medical jargon, which I’m guessing was tough—but I enjoy Luna in it and he plays well off the rest of the cast.
Warnings
Violence, disturbing images, sexual content, language, drinking/drug references, and strong thematic elements (including suicide.)
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