Flatliners

This review may contain spoilers!

This film starts out as an exceptional psychological thriller but sadly loses it's way once it shifts into a supernatural thriller. I would give Flatliners a 6/10.

This film has a really intriguing introduction focusing upon a group of medical students who put their knowledge towards discovering what occurs after death. Seeing quite a range of upcoming talent really masterfully tackle the medical jargon required while analysing and discussing their research around death is actually exceptionally fascinating and only has you even more curious when hallucinations begin to crop up. The cinematography for the film is rather dazzling; there's a great juxtaposition between the trance-like initial experiments as opposed to the horrific hallucinatory side effects which develop over the duration of the film. The score for Flatliners really heightens the mystery of what lies beyond but develops the discordant undertones needed at first, by the end of the film a nice tense atmosphere has been deftly created by the music.

Ellen Page, who played Courtney, does a good job as the film's protagonist; Page's obsessive drive to uncover what lies beyond is well portrayed and takes a manic edge upon the introduction of the hallucinations. Nina Dobrev, who played Marlo, certainly is a standout performance as the ambitious medical student; Dobrev has great romantic chemistry with Luna and strongly grapples with her role's moral conflict in the second half of the feature. James Norton, who played Jamie, really captures the cocky entitled playboy persona from the first moment we see him; Norton takes his role on a frantic journey and makes some very worthy changes to create a more compassionate character. Kiersey Clemons, who played Sophia, certainly is quite relatable as the stressed, meek student of the group; Clemons has some great fun playing her role without inhibitions after her death and comes to a great display of remorse by the end of the film for negative actions taken by her character. Kiefer Sutherland, who played Dr Barry Wolfson, is almost unrecognisable as this stern dean of medicine; Sutherland is quite a strict character who has very little patience for wrong answers and underprepared students. Wendy Raquel Robinson, who played Sophia's Mother, is a nice minor role who sets the home life setting for Clemons' character rather well; Robinson is definitely great at portraying an overbearing and controlling mother within the scenes that we see her in.

However, the best performance came from Diego Luna, who played Ray. Luna brings forth the moral centre of this film, often challenging the ethics of the experiments around death. Ray is quite a self-assured character but he comes from a place of experience and kindness. His urgency and frustration in the face of his friends' morally grey experiments add an interesting level of conflict to the film. Luna has some great chemistry with Dobrev, the exploration of their relationship and her backstory feels interesting because this pair has such immediate onscreen chemistry with one another.

This film is fairly good up until the midway point in which the film takes a supernatural tone. The sudden appearances of ghostly figures that 'haunt' the protagonists doesn't go a great deal beyond the standard conventions of a horror film. The characters start discussing their sins and how they've come back to 'haunt' them; a very blunt moral dilemma which dumbs the film down quite a bit. As one of the protagonists begins to venture into an afterlife of sorts it becomes very clear that the film has lost its sense of direction in favour of quite a toned down ending that lacks the interesting qualities of the beginning of the feature. The editing within the film can be very muddled and fairly slow for a thriller of this variety, creating a reasonably slow-paced film.

Anna Arden, who played Alicia, is little more than quite a generic hallucinatory spectre for most the film; when Arden is revealed to be a real motherly figure it's quite a disappointing twist and the chemistry needed between her and Norton just isn't there.