In medical slang, a "flatline" is when a person suffers clinical and mental death. Ironically, the film FLATLINERS does the same thing about halfway through. It starts out a fascinating drama about a group of medical students who have found a way to induce death and bring themselves back to life, experiencing the mystery of the afterlife and living to tell abotu it. It ends up becoming a supernatural thriller reminiscent of the most mediocre Stephen King TV-movie adaptations.
At the outset, Keifer Sutherland convinces a few of of his fellow students to help him with his death-cheatin' experiment, which calls for them to lower his body temperature and inject various chemicals into his blood stream until he flatlines. Kiefer flies over a giant field of flowers and trees for awhile. Then, thirty seconds later, they begin to raise his temperature and electroshock him back to life. Here, as with every other part of the movie where one of the flatliners is being brought back to life, director Joel Schumacher milks every drop of suspense he can get by making us think the students won't be able to bring their colleague back from the great beyond.
Sutherland comes back blathering about the tunnel, the shining light and all that crap, and suddenly the other students want to experience it as well. Next comes Billy Baldwin, the stud of the bunch, whose personal afterlife involves quick cuts of beautiful women in various stages of undress, once again reinforcing my belief that heaven is an Aerosmith video. Finally, Kevin Bacon and Julia Roberts experience a few fleeting moments of death.
But the movie's only halfway over, so we now some kind of complications will come along with these four manipulating the forces of nature. I just didn't think it would be a cross between BILL AND TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY and the ending of GHOSTBUSTERS. Suddenly everyone's worst memory of regret comes back to haunt them, Keifer's being an eight-year-old boy he inadertently killed when he was a child, Joe's in the form of all the women he's lied to for cheap sex (which he also secretly videotaped and sent to Bob Saget), Kevin's nightmare a ten-year-old girl he used to torment at school and Julia's her dead father.
It's at this point the movie crashes and burns, becoming a second-rate horror/thriller. The topic of death is one that either interests or frightens everyone, and FLATLINERS could have taken more time to explore the theme instead of making it a plot device that brings the characters' worst feelings of guilt to life. In reality, the only guilt these people should feel is standing by and letting this movie die instead of doing something to save it.
