Flatliners [Blu-ray]

Director: Joel Schumacher Joel Schumacher

Overview

Despite its occasional lapses into silly self-consciousness, Flatliners is one of the most intriguing and well-constructed supernatural thrillers of the 1990s. A group of brilliant medical students decide to literally play with life and death. They put themselves in suspended animation, electronically inducing a near-deathlike state and then pulling out of it at the last possible moment. Things get hairy when one of the students (Kiefer Sutherland) becomes obsessed with the notion of really dying, the better to experience the Afterlife before being revived--if he can be revived. In her first dramatic starring role (playing a sensitive young lady on a misguided guilt trip), Julia Roberts is very, very good--completely bereft of movie-star mannerisms. Audiences flocked to see Flatliners back in 1990 due to the highly publicized off-screen romance between Roberts and Sutherland. Oh, yes: Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin are in the picture, too.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/01/2020
UPC:	0683904632111
Original Release:	1990
Rating:	R
Source:	Sony Pictures Home
Region Code:	A
Language:	English
Time:	1:54:00
Sales rank:	5,057

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Kiefer Sutherland	Nelson Wright
Julia Roberts	Rachel Mannus
Kevin Bacon	David Labraccio
William Baldwin	Joe Hurley
Oliver Platt	Randy Steckle
Kimberly Scott	Winnie Hicks
Joshua Rudoy	Billy Mahoney
Benjamin Mouton	Rachel's Father
Aeryk Egan	Young Nelson
Kesha Reed	Young Winnie
Hope Davis	Anne
Jim Ortlieb	Uncle Dave
John Joseph Duda	Young Labraccio,Young David
Afram Bill Williams	Ben Hicks
Deborah Thompson	Terry
Elinore O'Connell	Rachel's Mother
Marilyn Dodds Frank	Bag Lady
Sanna Vraa	Bridget
Patricia Belcher	Edna, the Ward Nurse
Susan French	Terminal Woman
Beth Grant	Housewife
Cage S. Johnson	Near-Death Patient
John Benjamin Martin	Man on Crack
Lynda Odums	Nurse
Evelina Fernandez	Latin Woman
Miguel Delgado	Latin Husband
Ingrid Oliu	Latin Wife
Raymond Hanis	Latin Orderly,Latin Orderly
Zoaunne LeRoy	Waitress
Tom Kurlander	Medical Student
Nili Levi	Little Girl
Anne James	Beth
K.K. Dodds	Jill
Mali Finn	Actor
Natsuko Ohama	Professor
Megan Stewart	Actor
Tressa Thomas	Actor
Gonzo Gonzalez	Actor
Nicole Niblack	Actor
Cynthia Bassham	Actor
Sarabeth Tucek	Actor
Ilona Margolis	Actor
Julie Warner	Actor
Iilana B'Tiste	Actor
Deborah Torchio	Actor
Deborah Goomas	Actor
Michelle McKee	Actor
Nancy Moran	Actor
Dede Latinopoulos	Actor
Jared Milmeister	Actor
Patrick Gleeson	Actor
John Fink	Actor
Angela Paton	Actor
Deborah Thompson Duda	Terry
James Newton Howard	Composer

Technical Credits

Peter Filardi

Joel Schumacher	Director
Rick Bieber	Producer
Phil Cory	Special Effects
Michael Douglas	Producer
Bill Erickson	Stunts
Peter Filardi	Executive Producer,Screenwriter
Hans Metz	Special Effects
Michael Rachmil	Executive Producer
Scott Rudin	Executive Producer

Editorial Reviews

Taking on some very tough subject matter to translate cinematically, Flatliners is a benchmark film in the supernatural thriller genre. Putting a face to the phenomenon of the near-death experience, this grotesquely dark picture works reasonably well until it goes from the macabre to the contrived. While crucial to its plot structure, the moralistic bend Flatliners takes toward its ending almost single-handedly undermines the film as a whole. Set in the Windy City, fertile ground for the film's eerie life-and-death concepts, director Joel Schumacher and cinematographer Jan de Bont bathe the screen in rich, rippling green tones to give the film a spooky, ethereal effect. Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, and Julia Roberts give sincerely paranoid performances in the lead roles and Oliver Platt and William Baldwin support them equally well. Schumacher can be commended for tackling the frontier of the afterlife with ardor and open-mindedness, but had he exercised more restraint and less pedantry, the picture would remain more effective than the spine-tingling imitators it spawned.

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