‘Flatliners’ Review: Unremarkable Remake Flashes Before Your Eyes
Hollywood’s defibrillator acumen on long-dormant properties continues with “Flatliners,” only without any real shock to life to justify remaking the 1990 cheating-death thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts.
Keeping original writer Peter Filardi’s same basic structure of cocky medical students checking into the beyond for a few minutes for ostensibly research-oriented reasons, only to discover the afterlife has aftereffects, Swedish director Niels Arden Opley (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) and new screenwriter Ben Ripley (“Source Code”) serve up a fast-moving but seriously underwhelming and charmless display of young-and-dangerous tropes and paranormal consequences.