Flatliners

Flatliners (1990) begins with medical students experimenting on themselves. They stop one of their hearts and bring him back a short time later, to see what comes after death. The first attempt works. Then the ones who came back realise they brought something with them. The idea is simple and effective: what each of them brings back comes from their own past, from something they buried. The subject is not the afterlife but conscience. Joel Schumacher directed. The cast is built from the young stars of the moment: Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt. Roberts made it the same year as Pretty Woman. Its most distinctive quality is visual. Jan de Bont's photography treats the spaces almost as cathedrals; a medical school laboratory becomes a hall of vast columns and candles, and the film has no interest in realism. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Sound Editing. It was remade under the same title in 2017. It runs 115 minutes. Good for: nineties thrillers, films about what follows death, and the young cast of the era. Less good for: the scientific setup is entirely implausible and the characters make irrational decisions. The guilt is resolved shallowly; each of them apologises and is released.