DO NOT RESUSCITATE!

While far from blameless, remakes have certainly become an easy punching bag for critics. Although there’s no avoiding their current abundance in Hollywood, as studios scrabble around desperately for IPs with ready-made fan bases in a never-ending search for box office returns, it’s far from a new phenomenon.

Hollywood’s unquenching thirst for a quick buck means reboots, retools, and remakes will forever be a part of the industry’s makeup, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. In fact, there have been many examples of remakes far outstripping the quality their originals through the years. Hands up who’d take the Rat Pack version of Ocean’s Eleven over the Soderbergh remake? Yep, me neither.

Their inherent regressive nature makes the remake an easy target for many, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything fundamentally wrong with dipping into cinema’s past for inspiration, so long as the intentions are pure, and your reasons are clear. The only problem? Looks like someone forgot to tell the guys who decided to bring Flatliners back from the dead.

Hoping to gain insight into the afterlife, five medical students embark on a series of perilous experiments to play with the very foundations of mortality. Led by theorist, Courtney Holmes (Ellen Page), the group boldly attempt to stop their hearts for just long enough to trigger a near-death experience to take a glimpse into what lies beyond. While these brief flirtations with death initially appear life-affirming, things soon take a dark turn when sinister forces begin to haunt them. Forced to confront their past sins, the friends are dragged into a deadly game, as they battle the consequences of trespassing on the other side.

So, here it is. Let’s be honest; the original Flatliners really wasn’t all that great. While its b-movie style, stylised moodiness, and achingly cool cast made it the perfect fit for its time, the film just hasn’t held up well twenty-seven years later. Although the film holds a place in the hearts of many (and there’s nothing wrong with that), nostalgia is an infinitely curious thing. Like that VHS you used to tape Flatliners off the TV back in the day, memories tend to warp with time and, with rose-tinted glasses removed, the Flatliners of 1990 is just a bit pants.

Bemoaning another cynical Hollywood remake is fair enough but, like it or not, there’s definitely something there to warrant another Flatliners visit. If done right, the exploration of death, guilt, and the afterlife has fascinating potential, but potential along will only get you so far, however; as, without the right intentions to back it up, your film won’t be long for this world.

On almost every conceivable level, Flatliners is an unmitigated disaster and, despite the occasional flicker of life, the film has to be declared DOA. The core concepts of the original were always eminently fascinating ones, posing a whole host of complex philosophical and moral questions yet, while this remake inherits the spirit of these concepts, it displays little desire to expand on them. As a solid enough start gives way to a truly lifeless dirge, it’s clear that the film’s criminal lack of both ambition and imagination give it no chance of survival.

The film is thunderingly dull to its core, lacking the fortitude or motivation to do anything remotely interesting with its premise and, whether it’s the visuals, narrative, or character; Flatliners is sorely deficient in inspiration. No doubt conceived in the hearts and minds of a studio boardroom, Flatliners feels sterile and the very worst example of a Hollywood cash-grab. We may never know how or why Sony ever thought this remake was a good idea exactly, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the conversation to get to it was as tedious and infuriating as the film it birthed.

The creepy and scuzzy aesthetics that made the original so unique are completely absent here and, while there are occasional moments that threaten to offer something visually interesting, it repeatedly fails to follow through on them. The trippy ‘flatlining’ sequences offer us a little something of substance to chew on but, just as a breakthrough feels about to happen, we’re brought back down to the film’s cruel realities with a thud.

Sterile, bland, and over-lit; the film’s primary location is a hospital with so little personality it instantly sucks every bit atmosphere Flatliners manages to build. Gone are the original’s shadowy, gothic locations; replaced with something far more sterile and, as a film-viewing experience, it’s all painfully sobering, with the film’s shocking lack of visual personality managing to bleed itself dry of any inspiration.

Considering the genuine talent on display, perhaps the film’s biggest disappointment is just how let down the entire cast are by the poor quality of both the writing and direction. Nobody comes out of this mess with much credit, but it’s particularly galling when undoubtable talents such as Ellen Page, James Norton, and Diego Luna are consistently undercut with such desperately underwritten and pitifully constructed characters. Oh, and while it’s never a chore to have Kiefer Sutherland in anything, his cameo only really succeeds in highlighting just how far this remake falls behind its predecessor.

Bearing in mind the circumstances, the cast do their best with the pitiful amount they’re given, but the film’s script leaves very little room for any form of sympathy. With hole-riddled back stories and astonishingly weak motivations, none of the character work comes close to invoking the necessary empathy to make it all tick and it results are limp, lifeless, and unengaging. As everyone is put through their own personal hell as a consequence of their flatlining (scenes which should be absolutely ripe with character development), everything just feels so uninspired and the film ends up falling flat on its rushed, ill-conceived face.

As if the actors didn’t have enough to contend with, Flatliners appears to go out of its way to add nothing of consequence to make it stand out in an increasingly crowded horror landscape. In fact, to term Flatliners a horror would be to do a serious disservice to the entire genre, as the film rapidly descends into something so bland and lifeless, it’d struggle to raise a scare from even the most nervous audience members.

The film’s central premise is much the same as the original, which is fine, but the conceit is watered down to the extent that the film barely registers on any required level. A good horror needn’t have buckets of blood, gore, or even overt scares, to succeed but, at the very least, it must resonate on a psychological or emotional plane that Flatliners just cannot (or will not) reach. In a year that has seen some truly great horror films released and, as the genre continues to hit new and exciting heights, it’s absolutely tragic that something so offensively bland be allowed the time and oxygen to market itself as such.

As we go through the motions, with every character’s sins monotonously catching up with them, the film’s concluding act feels incredibly derivative of something like Final Destination; a film that, for all its faults, was able to take the ideas of mortality and fate to places Flatliners just can’t be bothered. As we plod along through a muddled mess of cliché and banality, the film once again lets down its audience by refusing to follow through with its promises; concluding with all the conviction of a movie that knows its living on borrowed time.

With name brand recognition and a dedicated fan base; appeasing its audience should be the bare minimum to ask of any Flatliners remake, but the stunning lack of effort to do so here exhibits both a dearth of imagination and a stunning lack respect for anyone who holds even the smallest place in their heart for the 1990 original.

Flatliners is a film of so little life that it consistently struggles to get its own pulse going, never mind the pulse of those willing to pay hard-earned cash to watch it. While there’s certainly potential in the ideas and notions of the original to warrant a reboot, this really wasn’t the way to go about it. With a bland script, unengaging characters, and a dispiriting lack of visual flair; Flatliners is the perfect example of the worst kind of Hollywood remake and so far beyond the point of resuscitation that it’s probably best its next of kin are notified.