Flatliners remake disappoints viewers

 Ellen Page, Nina Dobrev, Diego Luna, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons star in the remake of Flatliners.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Ellen Page, Nina Dobrev, Diego Luna, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons star in the remake of Flatliners.

Caitlyn Moudy, Staff writer

     The remake of the classic 90s movie, Flatliners, made some obvious changes that did not out do the original film  that was released on Sept. 29.

Each version of Flatliners has the same main concept: five med students conduct an experiment on themselves where they die and bring each other back to life, trying to discern what happens after death. The repercussions that they eventually realize is that their guilty conscious manifests into real life and torments them until they break. There are only two ways to stop it: confess and apologize or die.

     The 1990 version of Flatliners is hard to top. The nostalgia of a well done older movie can be tarnished when people try to remake it. Three members of the Brat Pack, a group of popular actors in the 90s who starred in multiple movies together, are in the original Flatliners. Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt play the main characters who are performing this experiment. These were some of the biggest actor and actresses of that time period. They were the Ryan Reynolds and Margot Robbie’s of the 90s.

    Their morbid fascination with death combined with each characters haunting sin makes this R rated movie not only intriguing but complex. One character killed her sister while texting and driving, one witessed her father’s suicide and another left his girlfriend while she got an abortion.

    Sutherland’s character in the original film, Nelson, bullied a kid when he was younger, throwing rocks at him until he fell out of a tree and died. Flatlining unlocked something like a new dimension that allowed each character to not only interact with the person they wronged, but to relive whatever was haunting them in a strange, horrific manner.

    This new rendition of Flatliners has a less effective sense of urgency in the character’s progression. The “tragedies” each one of them faced were mediocre and, quite frankly, typical. They were predictable movie afflictions and exceedingly different from the original film.

    Ellen Page, Nina Dobrev, Diego Luna, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons star in the new Flatliners and while they are quality actors, they do not fit together like the old ones did. Their chemistry did not feel as genuine as it did in the earlier film.

     Another unexpected difference was that in this Flatliners, there was some paranormal horror thrown in. A few jump scares down dark creepy hallways had the audience shocked, but the real plot twist was a characters death that did not occur in the 1990s version. That is the problem with remakes: if people are happy with the original, the new version will not do it justice.

     As a whole, the movie is not terrible. It just has some significant changes that make it different, and not in a good way. The movie is set in a more modern era with new technology and new mindsets on things, which changes the tone of the movie. It no longer feels like the characters are taking a huge risk with their medical careers or with their lives.