Five medical students get far more than a hoped for glimpse of the afterlife when they begin purposely stopping their hearts for a short time before being revived. That’s the rather simple sounding premise of Flatliners, the 1990 film directed by Joel Schumacher. And now it’s been remade with Ellen page leading med students Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons in their very questionable experiments. The first trailer has been just released and the best thing that can be said about it is that it is perfectly serviceable.
The original film is a fun thriller, but one would hope that for the remake director Niels Arden Oplev has something interesting planned to make this new version stand out. However, if you go by what is presented in this first trailer, it doesn’t appear that way. This two and a half minute clip is fairly unimpressive. It gives a brief sketch of the plot for those who might not know the original, but that is it. No hints of anything new being done with the material, no real new interpretation, nothing. Take a look for yourself –
Here’s the studios’ synopsis –
In Flatliners, five medical students, obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond the confines of life, embark on a daring and dangerous experiment: by stopping their hearts for short periods of time, each triggers a near-death experience – giving them a firsthand account of the afterlife. But as their experiments become increasingly dangerous, they are each haunted by the sins of their pasts, brought on by the paranormal consequences of trespassing to the other side.
Flatliners hits theaters on September 29.
