The film revolves around Nelson, a student at the Chicago Medical School. One day, Nelson tries to persuade his colleagues to end his life, but he is revived in time. Things seem to be completely different when they start to experience near death, which includes the past and other things that appear that can turn things around.
All I remember is that, just before I came to, there was a sudden burst of brightness. At last the movie was over, and someone had turned on the lights in the theater.
Young medical students intentionally kill and resuscitate each other, thereby gaining knowledge of the afterlife, which turns out to look a lot like... MTV.
Schumacher puts more flash than flesh on the story, but still manages to deliver the expected chills with cool efficiency as the students' extracurricular experiments take a sinister turn.
The movie's problem, like many others recently, is that it isn't any deeper, dramatically or psychologically, than its own trailer. It is the trailer: the long version.
It`s much to Schumacher's credit that Flatliners, for all of its crazy excess, does not turn into camp. Despite two or three bad laughs, the picture retains a basic conviction.
The look is overpowering enough to delay -- though not forever -- examination of the plot, which has to pull a fast one at every turn to keep moving and which eventually makes a mockery of plausibility.
Flatliners is moderately entertaining hocum at times, when it doesn't reach too far. Roberts is the best of the adequate bunch -- only her fans should make this a must-see.
Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon all bring conviction to these scenes, and William Baldwin, as the most irresponsible of the students, continues to suggest an electric screen presence that rivals his brother Alec.
