FLATLINERS
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(baumgart@esquire.dpw.com)
It's been a long, tedious, and violence-prone summer for the Phantom, and he's been getting a little edgy. Reviewing's in his blood now, and it's been nearly three months since his last reviews (for CLASS OF 1999 and BRAIN DEAD).
Since then, he's been subjected to more violence thinly disguised as pop entertainment than even Steven King, in his wildest dreams, possibly could have imagined. The combined body counts of TOTAL RECALL, ROBOCOP 2, DIE HARD 2, and PRESUMED INNOCENT (well, to be fair, PRESUMED INNOCENT's body count *was* on the low side) exceeded even the Phantom's threshold for violence sometime in mid-July; for him, the cold, dark days of autumn and winter, and the dozens of horror films they'll bring, will seem like welcome relief indeed.
Which brings us, in a rather roundabout way, to the subject of this review. For a film that is ostensibly about dying, it's curious that no one dies in FLATLINERS -- at least not for long. Although the film is as much of a horror film as was THE OMEN and THE EXORCIST, FLATLINERS ties PRESUMED INNOCENT as the summer's film with the lowest body count.
(Before the Phantom even gets started reviewing the film, he would like to say that he finds this both remarkable and quite refreshing; it wasn't too long ago that filmmakers knew how to make films, both horror and legitimate, in ways that didn't involve killing more people on screen than they disappointed in the auditorium.)
FLATLINERS starts with the tired old notion of "near death" experiences, takes a detour somewhere around ELM STREET, and winds up as a visual homage to one of the most stylish horror films of all time: THE HUNGER. Along the way, the director, Joel Schumacher, reminds us of just what made 1987's THE LOST BOYS so enjoyable, and why he is one of the best and most stylish directors making B-grade movies today.
The film itself is best described as a rollercoaster ride -- a lot of fun while you're speeding around turns and checking your seat restraints, but not very memorable afterward. To its credit, the film makes believable the shaky notion that a bunch of photogenic medical students with no homework, labwork, and just the occasional round to make, can repeatedly induce brain death in each other for periods of time greater even than the length of the commercials preceding the film, and then unfailingly resuscitate each other, bringing each other back to life and suffering no more brain damage than has the script.
Having established that, which is no mean feat, Schumacher uses the near death experiences to fashion a film that blends the best of the ELM STREET series with the sensibility of a 90-minute MTV longform video. Yet regardless of what you think of the subject matter, or even of the film itself, there is no denying that Schumacher's cinematography, his ability to set a scene and generate suspense, and his ability to use sound effects and lighting techniques effectively is virtually unequaled in the world of the horror film. Sam Raimi and the Coen brothers have shown the same skill with the EVIL DEAD series, BLOOD SIMPLE and RAISING ARIZONA, and of course Ridley Scott's films define the genre of techno-style, but Schumacher's talents have improved in the years since THE LOST BOYS, and at this point the Phantom has to rank him right up there with Sam, Joel, and Ethan.
Schumacher keeps the film moving along, and it's good that he does, since otherwise the audience would have time to consider just how trite and obvious the plot is. The Phantom is not going to drop any spoilers, but if there is a single phan out there who can't guess both where the film is going and how it ends by the time Kevin Bacon goes under, the Phantom will be most surprised. THE LOST BOYS suffered from similar problems, of course; as modern-day vampire stories go, it doesn't hold a silver bullet to NEAR DARK. But at least THE LOST BOYS had interesting characters, generally witty dialogue, and a script that doesn't sound as if the closest it ever came to a second draft was when the writer left some of the windows in his apartment open. To say that the characters in FLATLINERS are two-dimensional would be to insult the Cartesian coordinate system; they each have one dimension, and they each stick to that dimension throughout the film. Kiefer Sutherland is the driven, slightly bad guy; Kevin Bacon is the brilliant, unstable yet reliable guy, Julia Roberts keeps us all waiting for the scene where they perform CPR on her and in general never allows the word "collagen" to leave our thoughts, etc., etc.
But we don't go to horror films expecting great originality, do we phans? Although the occasional diamond in the rough like the EVIL DEAD series or last spring's BRAIN DEAD helps us recall that it is possible to be both creative and stylish, all too frequently we are forced to settle for films that are neither. That FLATLINERS is so very stylish is a distinct plus, and Schumacher handles the film so well that the Phantom was more than willing to overlook the bumpy plot and the less than surprising surprises.
The film is set in Chicago, but only barely. As he did with THE LOST BOYS, Schumacher has used various unrelated sets and city backdrops in a way that creates a private world for the film; FLATLINERS is not set in any recognizable part or suburb of Chicago, though alumni of Loyola may recognize some of the more striking buildings in the film. But for the most part, the characters in FLATLINERS exist in their own world, a world of colored lights, fog, and the night (it's almost always night during the film, and when it isn't night it's dark or cloudy). Phans of THE LOST BOYS will recognize some of Schumacher's signature elements of style, but FLATLINERS has many of its own; it is obviously related to THE LOST BOYS, but it doesn't look like a clone. One interesting new affectation is having large sheets of clear plastic draped over almost everything in sight; this was done to such excess that the Phantom thought that all of Chicago was undergoing massive asbestos removal procedures. And Schumacher's swooping and diving camera is back, but his technique has improved in the years since THE LOST BOYS. In FLATLINERS, he makes use of all the tricks of the music video trade, including black & white photography, purposely grainy or flat photography, washed out or oversaturated color, etc. There are also a good number of monitors of various kinds scattered throughout the film, and Schumacher even cribs a bit from SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE. For better or worse (and the in the Phantom's opinion, better), FLATLINERS plays more like a longform video than like a film.
By the film's end, the Phantom was reminded of Tony Scott's 1983 film, THE HUNGER, a vampire film that was exquisitely bad, though very, very stylish. Schumacher is not a talentless hack like Scott; FLATLINERS is nothing if not entertaining. Whereas THE HUNGER was a feast for the eyes and a famine for the mind, FLATLINERS keeps us entertained and happy as long as we don't spend too much time trying to predict the outcome of the next scene (or even what the next scene will be) -- for alas, all too often we are correct and left to wonder why someone didn't put as much effort into the story as Schumacher had obviously put into filming it.
And it's at the end, when things start winding down and heading toward their all-too-predictable conclusion, that the Phantom found his interest in the film flatlining (or at least faultering). FLATLINERS is a good 10 minutes too long, and the ending is so disappointing that it stands a good chance of ruining what is otherwise a very entertaining, if brainless, film for those phans who expected to see a horror film that had the courage of its convictions.
The ending, phans, is an ending only a studio executive or a parent could love; it is a near-perfect mass-market movie-of-the-week ending. The Phantom even felt that it gave THE ABYSS a run for its money as the world's most abysmal ending, but in the end his conclusion is that THE ABYSS is still reigning champion. Things start going astray once it becomes obvious that the film has a GHOST-like heart to it; all the malevolence, chills and thrills of the first half start to disappear like a vampire exposed to daylight, and the audience is left with 20 minutes of pointless exposition that leads inexorably to a conclusion worthy only of our strongest excoriation. (All right, perhaps that was reaching a bit, but the Phantom hasn't visited his old friend Roget in quite a while.) In a word, phans, the ending is execrable. (Now *that* was reaching...)
But don't let the lousy ending keep you from seeing FLATLINERS; after all, if the Phantom avoided every film that ended badly, he'd be able to get his library books back on time and he'd rarely have to clean the heads on his VCR. Like THE LOST BOYS, FLATLINERS is wonderful fun while you're in the theater, and though you will most likely be groaning along with the rest of the audience by the film's end, you won't be bored for the 90 minutes preceding it.
: The Phantom
: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com
: {cmcl2,uunet}!esquire!baumgart
.
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