leeper@mtgzx.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (08/15/90)
FLATLINERS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: An original and hypnotic horror film.
The music, the acting, the photography, and the script all
get very high marks. It is a horror film with intelligent
characters who do things rather than have things done to
them. Strong on atmosphere and intriguing in ideas. Rating:
high +2.
Horror films tend to be very derivative. They take many of the same
themes and rework them over and over. How different is FRIGHT NIGHT from
DRACULA really? It is very rare for me to come out of a horror film feeling
I had seen something really new for the horror film. And, be warned,
usually when I feel have seen something new, most audiences do not like the
films. In the last ten years there have been five horror films I have liked
in this way. They are SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, LIFEFORCE, PRINCE OF
DARKNESS, LADY IN WHITE, and now FLATLINERS. FLATLINERS is a mesmerizing
horror thriller about life and death and redemption. From about two minutes
into the film I was constantly anxious to find out what happens next. And
when it did happen, I was never disappointed but still never appeased.
A group of medical students are fascinated by the brink-of-death
experience that some of their patients have had. But their curiosity
certainly goes beyond just collecting other peoples' accounts second-hand.
As long as they have the ability to induce death and to bring people back,
why wait for it to happen by chance and to other people. Why not go off
exploring the undiscovered country for themselves. As one student says of
the quest to know what is beyond death, "Philosophy failed. Religion
failed. Now it's time for medical science to try." So one tries it and is
brought back But now things seem different to him and reality is not quite
the same.
At least in theme FLATLINERS is reminiscent of some of the classic old
Karloff films like Michael Curtiz's THE WALKING DEAD, and where that film
was a little pat in its description of life after death (Karloff just had
time to describe it as "peace" before dying a second time, and more
permanently), this film is only a little less pat in other ways in its
"meaning of death." However, it is not concentrating so much on what the
other side looks like as on what it is like to have been there and be back.
This is a movie to see in a theater; it will lose a lot of its visual
impact on the small screen. Almost the entire film is shot in either
twilight half-tones or at night. The medical school has got to be the most
baroque in the world. It would have done credit to any 1930s
expressionistic horror film. Its architecture is almost gothic with immense
vaulting rooms; dark, dismal corridors; labs with immense statue heads as if
gods were looking on. Director Joel Schumacher's previous THE LOST BOYS had
little to recommend it but atmosphere. This time he has better atmosphere
and a far more compelling story to tell.
Kiefer Sutherland (of LOST BOYS) plays Nelson, who is exploring death
partially for curiosity and partially for glory. Julia Roberts is Rachel,
who has her own private demons to face. Roberts has the best developed
character. Keith Bacon is Davis, who is just a little too good to be true.
Alec Baldwin's younger brother William plays Joe, whose story is somewhat
less interesting than the others and could by itself have been an episode of
"The Hitchhiker."
FLATLINERS is intelligently filmed and written. It has irony but
happily not apparently tongue-in-cheek. In short, it deserves to be a
classic horror film and may well make it. I rate it a high +2 on the -4 to
+4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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