I don’t think there was really any demand for a remake of Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners. Yet, Sony went ahead anyway and boy does it look like a bad investment.
In spite of a pretty okay cast like Ellen Page and Diego Luna, a tie-in to the original with the return of Kiefer Sutherland, and under the direction of the fairly acclaimed Niels Arden Oplev, Flatliners 2017 appears DOA. As of now, it has a certainly impressive 0% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the reviews have as lifeless as the film seems to be.
Mike D’Angelo, The AV Club:
Flatliners 2017 is the same dumb movie as Flatliners 1990, minus most of the surface charisma.
Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com:
[W]hen the best you can say about a movie is that it means well, that’s proof that it’s not working on any level that matters.
David Ehrlich, IndieWire:
[Oplev’s] version is light on scares and light on substance, and none of the setpieces he creates are compelling enough to distract from how dull it is to watch each character experience the same sequence of events ...
Kristy Puchko, Nerdist:
You’ve seen it all before, but this time it’s worse, because with no emotional investment in these barely-there characters, audiences will have all the emotional investment of choosing a stick of gum.
Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times:
It’s the same dreary hooey, made more tedious and witless through repetition.
Boo, chalk 2017's Flatliners up to another middling remake with nothing to offer except doubling down on the flaws of the original. We’ll check again in 2044 (or sooner) when I’m sure there will be another attempt.
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