Finally, a Horror Film That Is Well-Made

It is a commonly acknowledged truth that horror films are not well made. Usually they feature screams for dialogue, vapid female victims for characters, ketchup and water for blood. Directors replace psychological complexity with gore, and the paying audience experiences more disgust than fear.

Flatliners

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Produced by Michael Douglas and Rick

Bieber

Columbia Pictures

But Flatliners, curiously enough, is both a horrific and well-made film. There is an uncharacteristic clarity to director Joel Schumacher's nightmarish visions of life and death. His surrealistic work treats complex themes of retribution and atonement in a intelligent and thoughtful manner. Flatliners is a fantastic, satisfying work that--if not one of the season's most elegant films--is certainly one of the most evocative.

The somewhat uneven storyline is consistently engaging and occasionally gripping. The story revolves around five medical students at "University Hospital School of Medicine" who, by the miracles of modern technology, can stop all brain and heart activity--thus achieving "flatlines" on the EKG machine--to explore what exists after death. Their death experiences are at first aesthetically and emotionally beautiful, but grow exceedingly unpleasant with time. And when the "flatliners" come back to life--again thanks to the miracles of modern technology--they bring their otherworld haunts with them.

The catalyst for all this action is Nelson Wright (Kiefer Sutherland); it is Nelson's idea to experiment with death. His friends allege he is motivated by his craving for medical celebrity, not "truth and wisdom," as he claims. But his true motivation--nihilism--seems painfully obvious. "Philosophy has failed, religion has failed," Nelson tells them. "Now it's up to the physical scientists." Because he values nothing, least of all himself, Nelson goes to ridiculous lengths to satisfy his unsatiable curiosity. He is the first to medically die, the first "flatliner."

The film opens in an emergency room. Medical student David Labraccio (Kevin Bacon) begins an emergency operation on a screaming patient, who seems in need of anesthesia. It is not that oversight, but the oversight of hospital regulations--students cannot operate--that gets the young doctor suspended from medical school. He then reluctantly becomes involved in the experiment because, as he says, he has nothing else to lose. More likely, Labraccio becomes involved because Nelson says he needs him.

Labraccio wants to be everyone's personal savior, and in this film, he fares pretty well for himself. Nelson calls him a remarkably talented doctor, and Labraccio is blessed with healing hands. For reasons the audience does not understand, he administers more effective CPR than the other students. But unlike Nelson, Labraccio does not limit his healing powers to "the physical sciences." He is paternalistic and solicitous, especially of the lovely Rachel Mannus (Julia Roberts).

Mannus is the last of the believable med school students. Haunted by a death in her childhood, she displays a disconcerting interest in the topic. Mannus is a key player in the story's sexual politics, and universally lusted. So lusted, in fact, that the men chivalrously take turns dying before she does. But her nagging fear that her patients will not have "a good place" to go eventually compels her to become party to an experiment she once opposed.

The group of "flatliners" is rounded out by Joe Hurley (William Baldwin) and Randy Steckle (Oliver Platt), who comprise the body of the film's unlikely, supposedly promising med school students. Hurley spends too much time having sex with women and making illicit films of the act to study medicine, let alone cure patients, and Steckle, who constantly records conversations and events, longs to be a writer. Their motives for attending med school are unclear, and apart from the standard motives of fame and fortune, the audience is at a loss to explain their role in the experiments.

For that matter, it also never understands how the experiment sprung into Nelson's head in the first place, or how he stumbled upon the specifics in his formula for death. But this is certainly an ambitious and lengthy film, and necessarily starts in media res. And Flatliners more than compensates for its faults. The deft directorial manipulation of largely unsympathetic characters, and the fine, full characterizations by the actors so involves the audience that it cannot maintain critical distance.

Sutherland, one of the most promising young actors in modern movies, gives a brilliant performance as Nelson. He beautifully captures the psychological nuances of a sophisticated character. His acting genius is borne out by his ability to portray a young man simultaneously arrogant and self-loathing, passionate and cold. The movie is nearly two hours long, and it is largely Sutherland's presence that suspends the audience.

Bacon gives a competent, if uninspired performance. He is occasionally unbelievable as the committed doctor and friend because he acts with so little passion. He is given too many powerful lines; often, his anguished cries sound more like whines. Bacon, quite honestly, has grown too old to play the emotionally charged youth.

But Roberts is well-cast as Mannus. With her defined and elegant features, she is almost immediately appealing on screen because she is so beautiful to watch. But her beautiful features are also expressive, and Roberts can act. Like Sutherland, she has a talent for simultaneous characterization; as Mannus, she is at once mechanical and vulnerable.

Baldwin delivers a strong performance, but his role as a foil is unfortunately limiting. Platt is vaguely amusing, and blessed with the most of film's comic lines. "I did not come to medical school to kill my classmates," he deadpans at one point, "no matter how deranged they might be."

The real craftsmanship of Flatliners lies in its filming. Schumacher-whose past accomplishments include St. Elmo's Fire and The Lost Boys --has a wonderful eye for mixing film media, toned film with color film with grainy black and white. The cuts between short scenes are nothing short of brilliant, and the segues between fantastic and real scenes breathtaking. Schumacher chose an appropriately gorgeous and gothic campus (Loyola University in Chicago), as well as sparse city streets that are supremely atmospheric, and bathed them in haunting blue light, tatters and haze.

Flatliners Masterfully plays along the line that divides reality from fantasy and horror, and blurs the lines between text and truth. It maturely treats serious and powerful themes like death, guilt and self-knowledge. And though Flatliners may occasionally remind the audience members of their worst nightmares, it is a rich, thought-provoking film that finally does a much-maligned genre justice.