Flatliners (1990)

Joel Schumacher's nineties psychological thriller is yet another that spawned an unwanted and pointless remake in 2017. Watching Schumacher's original makes it even harder to understand why you would want to remake it; Flatliners is very much its own film with its gothic architecture and grey blue colour palette, and indeed its intriguing premise.

Kiefer Sutherland's Nelson is a medical student who wants to know what lies beyond death, and to help him realise this dream he invokes the help of some fellow medical students (including William Baldwin, Kevin Bacon and Julia Roberts).

Despite the excitement of the ploy, the dangers are all too real to Nelson's friends who baulk at the idea of Nelson flatlining for one minute before they resuscitate him.

After it appears to work however, the rest of them are keen to join, and it's then no surprise when things start to go wrong as each of them begin to be haunted by past sins.

Described by some as a gothic horror, Flatliners fails to fall into the horror category at all, but the story is engaging as a drama up to a point. It's well made and well directed, and even though towards the end the element of peril fades as the structure of the piece becomes repetitive, Flatliners remains an engaging story and a pretty entertaining couple of hours. 6.7/10