What if you could stop your heart to simulate a temporary death, and then be revived so you could describe your near-death experience to others? In Flatliners the mysteries of life--and the afterlife--compel five medical students (Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt) to experiment with their own mortality, and what they discover has unsettling psychological implications. That's the intriguing premise of this neo-Gothic horror thriller, directed by Joel Schumacher (Batman and Robin) with his typical indulgence of vibrant colours and hyperactive, hallucinogenic style. The movie borders on silliness at times, and the near-death recollection of memories results in some repetitious scenes, but the dynamic young cast takes it all quite seriously, which is what keeps this gaudy thriller on the edge. The fascinating premise could have been made into a better film, but Schumacher's mainstream excess doesn't stop Flatliners from being slick, occasionally even provocative entertainment. --Jeff Shannon

This is yet an excellent demonstration of Joel Schumacher's overt lack of talent as a filmmaker. His obsession for vivid visuals and flamboyant art-direction is evident throughout the film: always heavy on style, light on substance.

Like most of his films (e.g. those Batman craps), so much atmosphere was injected into the story that you can't realize how much of it is extravagant or irrelevant. Most of the film is imbued with blue neon lights, not only in every room in "medical school" but every part, every corner of the "dark" city. With a bizarre "coincidence", the school is a kind of ancient monastry, low-lith in neon lights, filled with gargantuan Gothic statuaries and huge Rembrandt paintings hanging from the walls. Despite such an unsettling, other-worldly atmosphere, it's interesting to see that there is no single scary, creepy moment in the movie. Furthermore, from Kiefer Sutherland to Julia Roberts, nobody seems like neither medical students nor thrill-seekers, all are stereotypical and less than one-dimensional miscasts. None is more believable than the other.

Actually the premise of the film was great, because very little is known about what people experience on the brink of death and their experimenting life after death. Only Joel Schumacher could have taken such a promising story and made it into a B-grade, stereotypical Hollywood faire. In the hands of a real visionary like David Lynch, Guillermo del Toro, Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam, the story of "Flatliners" might have turned into one of your worst nightmares, combining dark psychological states of the characters and morbid visuals into a haunting picture; but Schumacher doesn't have the finesse for anything deeper than canned visuals and half-assed subplots.