Flatliners 2017

     Five medical students are interested in what happens immediately after death.  They have seen the brain scans of patients who died but it’s not enough information for them.  They discover there is a full hospital underneath the regular hospital and it’s for emergencies.  Courtney is first and the other four students stop her heart for a short period.  Then, they bring her back to life.  All of the other students except Ray go though this experiment.  Later, he’s the only one not seeing visions of something that happened in their earlier lives.  These are incidents that they have never recovered from and have never moved on from.

     There is another film from 1990 with the same subject.  The cast in the older film is Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt.  The names of the students are changed in this new film.  I think both movies are good but the new one is not somewhat dated like the earlier film.  Kiefer Sutherland is a student in the 1990 film but he is a doctor in the new film.  Three of the students brought back to life attempt to receive forgiveness or right the wrongs from their past.  They hope this will stop the visions.  2 1/2* (this movie is so-so)  

109 min, Drama directed by Niels Arden Oplev with Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Kiefer Sutherland, Madison Brydges, Jacob Soley, Anna Arden, Miguel Anthony, Jenny Raven.

Note:  Imdb 5.2 out of 10, 5% critic 34% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 1 1/2*, Amazon 3.5* out of 5* with 32 reviews, Metacritic 27 out of 100 with 20 critics 3.5* out of 10* with 70 reviews, EmpireOnline 2* out of 5*.

Special Note:  The 1990 film has 6.6 on Imdb and the film of 2017 is not a sequel but it’s a remake.  Filmed in Toronto, Oakville, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.  At the end of both films there is a voice-over saying “Some lines should not be crossed.”  The song played on the piano by Courtney (Ellen Page) is Clair De Lune and it was also used at the end of Ocean’s Eleven.  There is a mistake with the defibrillation pads.  They are only effective when in direct contact with the skin.  Clothing can cause the electricity to flow across the chest and not through it as it is supposed to do.  The depicted defibrillation bears very little resemblance to real world scenarios.