Review – Flatliners

A quintet of hot-at-the-time stars (Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt) play med students who decide to play around with near-death experiences by stopping each others’ hearts and then brining each other back. This could have led in some interesting directions, particularly if the story had followed the implication of the previews (that they go to the “other side” and end up bringing something evil back with them). But even with no bigger boogeyman than the characters’ own subconscious guilt, in more competent hands this still could have been a more entertaining production. What we end up with is a three-way competition for “most awful element of the whole movie.” Though the acting and the script are strong contenders, I think the prize has to go to the visuals. Almost every shot in the whole picture is cartoonishly colored by primary-color lighting, and the art direction constantly borders on the absurd. An anatomy class in what looks like a poorly-lit gallery at an art museum? And that’s just one example. Overall something way better could have been done with all this money. See if desperate