Sony has issued the first trailer for its reboot of Flatliners. Picking up from Joel Schumacher’s original, we have another round of medical students here who decide to monkey around with death and are haunted by the results. Quite literally here, it seems, as this looks to be more of a horror film than the original 1990 outing was…
Not an outright remake, the film actually contains a direct link to the Schumacher film through Kiefer Sutherland’s reprisal of his character from it. Given that he does not feature in this trailer, I suspect his role will be little more than a cameo, with this proving similar to 2011’s The Thing prequel. That film was more remake than follow-up.
To be honest, I’m that not big a fan of the original Flatliners. It’s well-directed, has a couple of standout moments, and a nice cast (including Oliver Pratt, Julia Roberts, and Kevin Bacon), but overall its never done much for me. Schumacher always had a knack for genre entertainment though and the concept is ripe for revisitation, so I welcome a legacy sequel in concept. I’m just not sure if what’s going on here will offer up much more than a simple rehash.
Flatliners is a sequel to the 1990 film of the same name. It is directed by Niel Arden Oplev, from a screenplay by Ben Ripley. The picture is produced by David Blackman, Laurence Mark, Michael Douglas, and Brian Oliver. The film stars Ellen Page as ‘Courtney’, Diego Luna as ‘Ray’, Nina Dobrev as ‘Marlo’, James Norton as ‘Jamie, Kiersey Clemons as ‘Sophia’, Beau Mirchoff as ‘Brad’, and Kiefer Sutherland as ‘Dr. Nelson Wright’.
Flatliners arrives in theaters on September 29th, 2017.
