This is a movie where I can’t
really pretend that I take the premise seriously for a single second. While I do have a personal belief in the
afterlife, I do not think near-death experiences are evidence for it. If such evidence existed it could only be presented
by contact with spirits of those who are definitely dead, not the memories of
those who were close. Even if their
experiences were completely valid, the afterlife might very well last five
minutes rather than an eternity for all we can tell.
Beyond that, I’ll never understand
what Medical Student Nelson Wright (Kiefer Sutherland) thinks he’s proving in
this story. The plan he forms with his
fellow students is to stop their hearts, revive themselves, and record what
they experience. I don’t see anything
about this experience that makes them especially different from the numerous
other near-death experiences.
The closest the movie comes to
scientific objectivity is when Dave Labraccio (Kevin Bacon) undergoes the
experiment assuming that, as an atheist, he would experience nothing unless
there was an afterlife. This completely
disregards the fact that he was raised in a culture of religion. It also disregards the possibility he himself
raised: the brain might release some hormone at the point of death to calm the
dying individual
I don’t say all of this as a
negative. The fact that the movie isn’t
scientific frames how I view it. I
approach this movie as pure 80s cheese not that far removed from Re-Animator (never mind that it was made
in 1990). From that perspective, this
movie is pitch-perfect. Kiefer
Sutherland gives a stylized performance that’s brilliantly over-the-top in his
utter narcissism.
Nelson is backed up in his insane
endeavor by Rachel Manus (Julia Roberts), who doesn’t look like she’s missed a
second of sleep through medical school, the aforementioned Dave Labraccio, and
resident womanizer Joe Hurley (William Badlwin). The group is rounded out by Oliver Platt as
Randy Steckle, who takes very little part in the actual flatlining, but sticks
around to tell the others that they’re insane, and provide some assistance with
reviving them.
Being a movie, of course, things must actually
happen in response to this experiment.
Things that, for some reason, have never happened to anyone experiencing
near death experiences before. Rather
than simply seeing glimpses of a supposed afterlife, the med students being to
have visions of their past sins haunting them.
Dave, for example, begins seeing visions of a little girl he picked on
when he was a child. Joe sees visions of
women he filmed without their knowledge.
Rachael’s “sin” was rewritten to avoid tarnishing Julia Robert’s image,
so she still struggles with guilt concerning the suicide of her father.
Interestingly, the movie would be
very different if it was limited to those three scenarios. Both Dave and Joe are “haunted” by the
“ghosts” of people who are clearly still alive, and Rachel did nothing
wrong. In and of itself, even as cheesy
as the whole premise is, these three stories could be taken as purely
psychological horror. Near the point of
death these three people faced their own demons.
But, naturally, the 80s couldn’t be
that subtle. So, Nelson finds himself
face-to-face with the physical ghost of his childhood dog, and a kid (Joshua
Rudoy) whose death he was accidentally responsible for. This ghost child is able to physically beat
up an adult Kiefer Sutherland, because of course he is.
In terms of horror, Nelson is
almost in another movie. Not to say that
it isn’t cheesy throughout, but there’s a difference between being tormented by
visions of past wrongs, and a cut 20-something being spat on by a small child
who just overpowered him. Furthermore,
unlike the others who ultimately share emotional moments in which they deal with
their sins, Nelson never calms down enough to really give a sense of closure. While the movie does use one scene to
establish the possibility that Nelson is engaging in self-harm and imagining a
child doing it, I don’t think Nelson has a single scene in which he deals with
his own wrongs in anything other than a blind panic.
Eventually, Nelson tries to
reconcile with the demons of his past by flatlining with no one else
present. After apparent “death” he’s
apparently forgiven by the ghost of his childhood enemy, and returns to the
land of the living for a happy ending.
It’s exactly the blend of cheese this movie needed.
If you haven’t seen Flatliners, you’re missing out. You won’t be scared, but it’s a fun movie.
If you haven’t seen Flatliners, you’re missing out. You won’t be scared, but it’s a fun movie.
