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After classes, Sutherland has a plan whereby using a combination of drugs, refrigeration, and Kevin Bacon’s dreamy gaze, he will medically snuff himself, and then return from the Great Beyond. It sounds very impressively dangerous the way it’s described in the film, but it seems to go pretty well the first time. Even after an especially aggressive CPR session, he seems positively refreshed. When he reports the wondrous feelings he experienced while under, the others are inspired to try it out themselves.

This might be where Flatliners first flirts with the borders of logic in much the way all Schumacher films do. The same people who were so dead-set against this earlier now begin challenging one another to “beat” Nelson’s time. The awe with which these people recently viewed death falls away rather quickly. I suppose you could make a number of narrative arguments for this, but to me it feels like a stylistic choice. These characters have been drawn with very broad strokes, and their personality traits are necessary only to define them relative to the film’s premise.

If you can accept this, you’re good to go. If not, Flatliners might go down like a bad burrito.

Personally, I can take it. It’s obvious early on that the movie wants to explore some interesting themes. What if we could play with the boundary between Here and There with relative impunity, just for the sake of the experience? Would we learn enough to change ourselves for the better, or would it make the experience less meaningful? Worse yet, could it become as weirdly addictive as taking cold showers, and might there be a terrible, horrible price to pay?

Apparently, the answer is mostly yes, and the way Flatliners presents all of this is, for a time, engrossing. This does not mean the movie is a home run; as I implied there is a terrible, horrible price to pay. For all the moves it makes toward asking Important Significant Questions, Flatliners kind of chickens out before it’s all over. It actually functions as a pretty good horror film for much of its run time, and I’m afraid it gets caught up enough in this for the story to ultimately unravel before landing. If you like to watch brooding twentysomethings with fabulous hair and great looking clothes ruminate over the meaning of life as a story evaporates around them, then you’ll be thrilled.

If you’re looking for more, you will be disappointed, but you will still be entertained. There is truly some brilliant camera work in this film, and a dreamy, ethereal atmosphere permeates the entire film. Also, if there's a shortage of steamy, rain slicked, artfully lit thoroughfares where you live, it's because Joel Schumacher took them for Flatliners. This is a goddamn great looking film, to the point where it begins to carry weight when Nelson begins to fear he's tapped into something dark that he can't control.

Something dark and very BLUE that he can't control. Still, I can’t help but be a little annoyed by the way things come up short in the story department. The kids protest about science and discovery, but they're not very scientific about ANYTHING. They approach their experiment like a fraternity dare and each time they push the limit, they become more competitive with one another. And just when you worry that they’re losing sight of the reason for what they’re doing, you realize that no - the MOVIE is. Joe comes across like Quagmire from Family Guy. You want to punch Randy in the face.

Rachel gravitates between being something for the men to fight over and being an actual plot catalyst. Everything LOOKS great, and initially SOUNDS great, but ultimately feels as weightless as the strips of fabric and plastic sheeting that are hanging from in the background in SO many scenes during this film.

Flatliners is basically a movie about some kids who develop a death fetish, and it comes back to haunt them. Replace these characters with the ones from The Lost Boys, and you have a far more controversial film. As it is, Flatliners is stylish, sexy fun that makes you think, but only a little. Schumacher is known for making distinctive films that are often equal parts social experiment and high melodrama. Sometimes that's a good thing (Falling Down), and sometimes it's not (St. Elmo’s Fire simply sucks).

Flatliners is exactly those things, but in a good way. It straddled the line between summer blockbuster and high concept horror think-piece as deftly as Nelson and his friends straddle the line between our world and the next. It’s a philosophically vapid but genuinely entertaining story about letting go, moving on and growing up.

Plus lots of Gothic architecture, acres of steam, and Kevin Bacon’s splendid mullet.

That's a win in my book.

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