FLATLINERS (1990)
Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, Hope Davis, Joshua Rudoy
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Chicago medical student Nelson Wright is walking along a waterfront and with the sun going down, states in a famous phrase [attributed to Lakota leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull], "Today is a good day to die." He meets up with his friends & fellow classmates -- David, the valiant atheist and most skilled of the students who is praised but suspended for saving a woman's life in the absence of doctors; Rachel, the sensitive introvert who interviews a collection of people about their encounters with dying; Joe, the womanizing Casanova hunk who'll hit on any hot babe with a pulse; and Randy, the bowtied goofy comic relief who's trying to find a title for his memoirs. From Nelson's prompting, the hotshot future practitioners discuss one of life's biggest eternal mystery questions: what happens after death? Nelson introduces his secret tests on controlled near death experiences that take place after-hours in a Campus wing of their University-under-renovation. Scaffolding, plastic tarp and a leaky roof surround the constructed makeshift lab, but the necessary operating table & surgery instruments are at the ready. Nelson is initially scoffed at but under the guise of ambitious academic research, his friends agree to lend a hand, and he subjects himself to being flatlined (having the heartbeat and brainwaves shut down) for 1 minute. Though pronounced clinically "dead", he is resuscitated from a nether region. As crazy as it is, Nelson's extraordinary trial run has worked and at first, he doesn't describe what he saw: an incident in his childhood of bullying a boy named Billy Mahoney because the moment began peacefully innocuous. He is vague in his telling that something has affected him.
The others, except Randy who is the group's voice of reason and acts as a monitor, drop their earlier reservations and decide to undergo their own NDE. Next up is skeptical Joe whose trippy flashback currently reveals his numerous sexual conquests as a Hefner-esque horndog who videotapes women without their awareness or consent. Joe is the Rob Lowe sex tape scandal x 10. David's NDE also recalls the childhood bullying of a black girl named Winnie Hicks which often left her in tears. All 3 men describe a feeling that resonates and soon start having vivid hallucinations as a direct result of their NDE's that become more distressing. An uneasy, pessimistic & neurotic Randy is worried that the risky course they embarked on flirts too close to disaster. Each daring participant grew increasingly competitive in their bidding war one-upmanship of pushing their flatline timeframe to a higher count meaning the tricky method of bringing them back ran higher odds of failure. A shroud of darkness sets in as Nelson gets the shit kicked out of him twice from hockey stick-wielding Billy. Engaged Joe who is soon to be married, is bothered by voyeuristic visions of his trophy girls that nag his conscience and condemn his cheating. David has the tables turned on him from an encounter on the train which sees Winnie mercilessly taunting him with foulmouthed playground verbal abuse. On Halloween night, Rachel is ready for her NDE as David unsuccessfully tries to stop her from partaking. She almost dies for real when a power outage hits leaving her helpless. With her friends freaking out trying to bring her back, she is at first unresponsive to the CPR shocks from the emergency defibrillator paddles but she is revived. Her sad mind-journey voyage was that of her beloved Dad committing suicide when she was little. Devastated & grief-stricken, she always blamed herself.
Nelson, David and Joe share their dismaying NDE stories with severely bruised Nelson's encounters being the most frightening & torturous. A remorseful David sets out to make amends in hopes that his nightmares will stop. Afterwards, Joe's fiancée, Anne, visits his apartment while he's out. She finds his illicit videotapes of homemade bedroom softporn [a forerunner to the sleazy building owner Baldwin would play 3yrs later in SLIVER] and watches selections of the harem. He comes home to find her heartbroken from betrayal and she breaks up with him. With their relationship over, his visions end. Nelson joins David who visits Winnie. Now married with child and having moved on, she still shows a glimpse of fragility. David apologizes for his hurtful behavior and the humiliations she endured. She accepts the apology and thanks him. He leaves heading back to his truck to find Nelson beating the living daylights out of himself in the vehicle with a pickaxe (David is a rock climber) which is infact another thrashing administered by Billy. David interrupts Nelson's attack and both men head home. From their blossoming chemistry, Rachel finds solace with David and they sleep together that night (with Nelson's jealous mutual affection for her forming the love triangle). A stirred up Nelson drags Joe and Randy to a graveyard to reveal he killed Billy after throwing rocks at him while he was cornered up a tree causing him to fall. Nelson leaves upset & alone resulting in David temporarily bailing on Rachel to pick up the stranded duo. Rachel wanders into the bathroom where she has another run-in with her father. He expresses how sorry he is to his daughter for leaving her in the manner he did; having returned from Vietnam addicted to heroin and caught having fatally overdosed.
[In many other hands, let's be honest, Rachel's foray would have been coming to terms with molestation]. Like Joe and David before her, she feels relief from the lifted weight of sorrow. Nelson calls her saying he needs to flatline again to finally free himself of suffering. He also apologizes for enlisting them all in his dangerous & reckless experiment, and for the unpleasant ordeals they each went through. The 3 men reach Nelson first who has been "dead" for a whopping 9 minutes. With Rachel's arrival, the friends frantically try to save him and struggle to bring him back, but this time Nelson's NDE is sacrificial as he puts himself in Billy's place to be the one who dies from the tree fall. Unable to stimulate any activity in Nelson, the friends are prepared to declare him dead -- with the potential of his passing bringing not only expulsion but criminal charges. But Nelson's expiry date is still a long ways off from this mortal coil, and he's not ready to cash in his code blue chips just yet. With a new narrative in Nelson's punishment, Billy has forgiven him bringing an end to Nelson being throttled. As David gives one last CPR shock from the paddles, Nelson is miraculously awakened to the alleviation of his friends, and he whispers, "Today wasn't a good day to die." FLATLINERS is loaded with symbolism. By physically returning to a bystander version of their past to see the youthful wrongs they committed/caused/witnessed, and particularly before balancing previous unresolved harmful actions, these ill at ease manifestations of traumatizing transgressions (which also incorporate the memory & perspective of other victims) would obviously follow them back to present-reality adulthood; returning indeed to haunt.
Flatlining by the foursome became an extreme form of misadventure where unintended consequences from carried burdens that took an alternate physical form, brought serious self-examining repercussions (before any resolution) that required difficult admission of faults; confession; empathy; truthful repentance; and the healing forgiveness of those mistreated to ultimately release both parties from repressed pain. The ego-driven mistake of playing God means paying the price in an unexpected form of martyrdom. Nelson as the maverick ringleader has the rush of an adrenaline junkie. He's a manipulative prick in his desire for fame and could easily be written off as callous but his hesitancy shows he is not entirely without a moral compass, even though he crosses ethical boundaries with his implemented key that attempts to unlock ultimate knowledge. He introduces his group to a project of 'induced demise' with gung ho that pushes the envelope, but the afterlife that waits is not a continuation of existence to explore possible heavenly hereafter in the original sense of his purpose. Instead, it's a landing detached of warmth, and a purgatory represented by a situated troubling moment stuck in an endless loop; a needle in the groove of guilt & regret. With an obsession for decoding the great beyond that intensifies, he's scared and lashes out with tantrums of immaturity but still maintains a tough air of rebellious overconfidence. Nelson bears slight tragic hints of an unhinging Dr. Jekyll and a vain Victor Frankenstein who are fatally penalized for toying with death. As far as his impetuousness fares in the universal mad scientist manual, his creation quickly gets out of hand which worsens into a mess that requires his unhealthy creator self to be rescued.
There are no blissful auras; or tunnels of light; or being outside of their bodies looking downward on themselves; or angels; or Pearly Gates; or reunions with deceased loved ones welcoming the group to the 'other side' with open arms. The friends have entered a dimensional door which is very familiar but changes them through an unsettling revelation of personal baggage in the background. They confront uncomfortable secrets where the buried old ghosts of each can only be pacified by an atoning restitution. With accusations of Gen X cynicism, sophomoric sermonizing for grand answers with arrogant audacity, and opinionated pretentious pop psychology [c'mon, this was the beginning of the ranting-slacker 90's], FLATLINERS is a cautionary tale with decorative flair. Its spooky gothic edge, palette of neon color lighting, and shadowy gargoyled architecture borrows from BLADE RUNNER, and takes an intriguing concept of 'life flashing before one's eyes' that straddles a middleground of compelling with implausibility. The repetitive course of the friends does sag in the individual occurrences but in the movie's defense, would have been more bloated if Randy was a 5th journeyman. On its surface, what may look like a thin story threaded with thick melodramatic ponderings and tense peril, is not outright aimless in its logic but rather offers a consideration on the nature of sin, responsibility & redemption. Without being incredibly profound, and with some lazy writing culminating in a textbook ending that is hurried & tacked on, the movie regardless brings heavier messages about catharsis & closure. Bolstered by stylish atmospheric production design and a strong talented cast of Brat Pack-ish rising stars, what's delivered here is also one of the decade's first entries in suspenseful psychological thrillers, alongside JACOB'S LADDER, with some toes dipping in paranormal/supernatural sci-fi.
Sutherland clearly steals the movie and Roberts has the least to do among the friends. Her episode is the weakest which is unusual considering her high profile from PRETTY WOMAN could've/should've easily brought her installment more showcase. [Both stars announced their engagement shortly after FLATLINERS' premiere and set their wedding for the following summer. They became tabloid fodder when the groom was stood up at the altar by the bride who ran off with Jason Patric -- Sutherland's castmate in THE LOST BOYS. Sutherland's drinking and alleged affair with a go-go dancer was said to have ended their relationship. When Sutherland was set to host SNL a few months later, Roberts got wind of her ex's planned opening monologue about being ditched that took potshots at her and begged him not to do the routine. He ignored her and did so anyway to huge laughs. Sutherland would reteam with Bacon 2yrs later in A FEW GOOD MEN, and reteam with Platt 6yrs later in A TIME TO KILL]. Perhaps forgotten is that FLATLINERS was a box office hit, and received a 1991 Oscar nomination for Best Sound Editing. [It lost to THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER which featured Baldwin's brother, Alec]. Had this movie not been pre-BATMAN Schumacher's [Sutherland incidentally is in 5 of the directors films], I'd love to have seen David Cronenberg at the helm. As for FLATLINERS (2017)? Sutherland has a starring role and claimed the new version, while geared for millennials and widely panned as overt self-indulgent posturing more akin to TV's Grey's Anatomy, was not a remake but a sequel. Despite being a different character (named Barry Wolfson) in a city unidentified (hello Toronto), and with no reference whatsoever to the 1990 events [except for a deleted scene near the end that was cut, and meant as a homage for older audiences], Sutherland added that his playing of a professor/Chief of Staff at a Med School University is actually Nelson who has just changed his name and moved on from his earlier tampering misdeeds.
SOULTAKER (1990)
Joe Estevez, Robert Z'Dar, Vivian Schilling, Gregg Thomsen, David 'Shark' Fralick, David Fawcett, Jean Reiner, Chuck Williams
Directed by Michael Rissi
A man dressed in black (except for his silver-tipped cowboy boots, and no it's not Johnny Cash) enters the hospital room of an elderly man. The visitor is a grim reaper who extracts the soul of the patient who expires. Just as he arrived, he leaves unseen. 'The Man' next appears with another reaper who happens to be his boss, the Angel of Death. Both men walk along a road headed towards a town Summerfest picnic in which Zack Taylor (no, not the 12th President of the USA) has met up with his ex-girlfriend, Natalie McMillan. The duo still have feelings for each other and are joined by friends, wayward Brad [a near-sociopath who's channeling Chicago Bears QB Jim McMahon, and no doubt wears his sunglasses at night] and bro-dude Tommy. Bossman singles out the foursome (and Brad's bimbo girlfriend named Candice) to be 'taken' by his reaper. Grimmy has a special interest in Natalie as she is the spitting image of his lover during the Civil War. Natalie has the disdain of Brad who thinks she's a golddigging rich bitch (hmm, jealous because he can't get into her pants?); disapproval from her father the Mayor who thinks Zack is a loser; and the bad luck of having been ditched by her friend Karen who she came with when Karen splits with her boyfriend. After the festivities, she catches a ride with Zack in Brad's car. Brad's dangerous joyriding is sponsored by having snorted coke and downing a bottle of Jack Daniels, and as he picks up speed, the reaper waits at a far off dead end where he causes the car to swerve & slam fatally into a tree. All except Candice awake unharmed in a forest at nightfall thinking they've been ejected from the car, but unbeknownst to them (at first) is that they were killed in the crash and are now disembodied spirits in the waking world.
The reaper is at the car where he extracts the soul of Candice among the mangled bodies of the foursome still in the vehicle. Unable to 'take' Brad, he tells Bossman that the foursome are 'displaced' and is ordered to retrieve them. The group return to the car where paramedics have since taken them to a hospital. Brad's big ziplock bag of hidden coke has been found as the reason for the accident, and a detective is curious as to why the front passenger door is open believing it was unlikely to have happened upon impact. When the friends unsuccessfully try flagging down a police car returning to town, the reaper shows himself, attacks Brad, and extracts his soul resulting in Brad dying for real in the ambulance. Zack, Natalie, and Tommy have fled and run into a convenience store asking the cashier for help from a killer on the loose chasing them. They are still unaware that they can't be seen or heard and believe they are being rudely ignored as the employee prattles on to his girlfriend on the phone, thumbs through a porn mag, and empties a coin jar into his pocket. The trio then see a TV news report about their narcotic-involved crash leading an angry Natalie to argue with Zack thinking he's a drug dealer. They are further confused when hearing they are all at the hospital in comas. Outside, after Zack makes a 911 call from a payphone resulting in the operator hanging up, Natalie runs towards a tow truck hauling away their wrecked car and is grabbed by the reaper when it blows past. But his memories of a past life from her striking resemblance cause him to halt 'taking' her, and she is scooped up by Zack as they both run away.
The reaper follows Tommy who has run back into the store as Bossman pops in to reprimand his reaper for not getting Natalie when he had her in his clutches. Tommy tries to offer the reaper money but he ends up paying a different price at the cost of his life. The cashier is arrested by a cop answering the store alarm who mistakes the employee as a robber picking up the cash. As Zack and Natalie run back into town, the reaper is right behind them and both make it to Natalie's mansion house. Her mother can see them(!) and is told about the reaper having killed Brad; is asked for a gun by Zack; speaks on the phone requesting help for the duo when Zack once again can't get through to the receiver; and draws a bath for her daughter. Meanwhile the arresting cop tells the detective about the cashier who blames ghost activity, with the detective again suspicious wondering who set off the store alarm. As Zack and Natalie make nice, she heads upstairs where she hears strange footsteps and rests on her bed which brings dreams of the nights events, and a POV of an oxygen mask being attached while in an ambulance. Zack watches TV and wanders through the house where the pet dog in the kitchen, who can't see him, growls & barks at his presence in DEV (dog's eye view)! A sleeping Natalie is watched over by her mother and told to forget about dating Zack again. Annoyed, she undresses in the bathroom where she is spied on from behind the door. Zack watches a news conference of the Mayor announcing that due to brain death, Natalie's life support systems will be disconnected at midnight. Zack is startled when Natalie's distraught mother then appears on screen by her husband and at the same time, creepy Mom in the bathroom morphs into the reaper causing Natalie to scream.
Flashback memories reveal the reaper was betrayed by his lover whom he shot dead after she was found in bed with another man. Seeing Natalie as a reincarnation substitute, he offers her eternal life to stay at his side. Zack races upstairs to the bathroom and clocks the reaper with a golf club while Natalie flees. She returns with a shotgun from the attic to find Zack being held by the throat in midair, and refusing the reaper's offer again, shoots him to no effect. The reaper throws Zack through a window whose fall also has no effect. Outside, the duo run from the house to a bus stop where Zack tells her of her condition in the hospital, and why no one can see or hear them. Desperate to get back into their bodies, Natalie's parents and Zack's Dad meanwhile are numb in the waiting room with Mr. Mayor dishing out a healthy portion of snobbery, but losing his snootiness as they have to face signing 'pull the plug' release forms. At the hospital, with less than 15 minutes counting down to the permanent exit, Natalie is trapped on an elevator by the reaper (who morphed from a young orderly humorously bumping reggae on his walkman headphones). He tells her they are headed to a 7th floor (seeing as the hospital only has 6) which is an afterlife, and that he is an angel who takes souls for a better world but Natalie wants off of his ride. As Zack feverishly rushes to her (and is freaked out while also passing deceased Tommy's room), with 6 minutes left, he reaches the 6th floor and spends another 3 minutes yelling for her(!) He meets Brad who is now also a black-clad raincoated reaper but more an underling. And still a jerk although a little remorseful. Brad makes a witty Led Zeppelin reference of no such thing as a stairway to heaven and extracts the soul of an elderly woman.
Natalie with the reaper watches her parents stand sad vigil over her bedside as they prepare to sign the release papers. When she begs for them stop, her mother senses hearing her daughter's cries but the reaper who is determined to rekindle his old flame (I suppose at heart, he's really lonely), convinces her that Zack is dead and she'll be forever safe in his realm as there is nothing more in the current to cling to. As her resistance fades she joins Grimmy back to the elevator to cross the sinister uncelestial bridge. Brad tells Zack that those who kill people, even unintentionally, must serve the Angel of Death as penance. [Wow, a continuous cycle of killing in the infinite yonder. Sounds like virtual ecstasy for every serial/mass murderer wishing to come back from the grave but I digress]... With 1 minute left, Brad brings Zack onto the elevator where Natalie runs back to him, with Brad helping by preventing the reaper from separating the duo. Now midnight, Zack and Natalie make it back to her room where she enters herself, and Zack (finding that a pendant in her hand acted as a source of protection) extracts her soul. With the reaper coming for her, Zack sprints through the halls having denied him his main prize. As the reaper fails to claim Natalie, he follows Zack up stairwells to a boiler room. At 2 minutes past midnight [the hands that threaten doom♪] he drops the pendant which the reaper finds, giving chase to Zack onto the hospital roof. Remembering his being slingshotted from the bathroom window and no longer subject to pain, Zack jumps off the building and again survives where he dashes back to his own room. Shocked by his plummet, the reaper is met by Bossman who tells him that by violating the precious time necessary in his failure to snatch the duo, he must now face lethal punishment.
Now 3 minutes past midnight, Zack enters his body and awakens from bed with a doctor and nurse trying to calm his agitated state. He staggers back to Natalie's room and tries to bring her back by restoration, while the pleas of the reaper to the Angel of Death fall on deaf ears as Grimmy himself is mercilessly extracted by full disintegration. Natalie has flatlined but revives to the happiness of Zack and her parents. Sometime later with the duo recovered, Zack visits Natalie in her room as she's set for discharge, and he is on good terms with her father who thanks him for saving his daughter's life. He then shows her his surprise: his fixed up navy blue 1956 Chevy. Saying she feels they've been given a second chance and asking what happens if the reaper returns, he replies no worries as they'll hook up in paradise. They kiss and drive off. SOULTAKER looks like a straight-to-video release but opened in theatres to what I'm guessing must have been a very short run. Set to the close of the acid-washed 1980's, it's a bomb plagued with uneven wooden acting; stiff dialogue; a wobbly storyline; plenty of out-of-synch emotional beats; a syrupy glaze of clichéd 'love-meant-to-be-together' (he's a poor Romeo mechanic from the wrong side of the tracks, and she's a jittery Juliet socialite from a wealthy family); a clumsy climax that falls apart in a whirlwind of rubbish; and grade-Z sfx. Its silly micro-budget fantasy is a feast of ineptitude that will have you laughing & nitpicking from the get-go, and is best remembered for being bashed on a 1999 episode of MST3K with Schilling -- who plays Natalie and wrote the screenplay -- said to have been irritated when she was mockingly compared to Tonya Harding.
The movie is along the lines of CARNIVAL OF SOULS and Schilling based her script on a real 1986 car accident involving her and a friend. While definitely not as spooky or arthouse (but with lots of the same meandering drifting more than morality tale) and merged with hospital horror, its poor man's lineage shares the eerie plane of protagonists with a footstep in 2 existences. And stuck in a crossover limbo where the thin tether between each is wavering, this gap of twilight atleast doesn't sparkle. With better writing, solid actors and real scares, this could have been FINAL DESTINATION a decade before that franchise began. [If we're talking supplementary romantic angle alone, SOULTAKER also has a veiled semblance to the German films WINGS OF DESIRE; its sequel FARAWAY, SO CLOSE; and the American remake of WOD -- CITY OF ANGELS]. Whereas religion, theology & philosophy for centuries haven't proven what happens when we kick the bucket [the debate lies with individual/collective interpretations based on spiritual faith which is an argument for another time], the Angel of Death and the reaper in SOULTAKER know the score from whom there is no escape. When our time is up, that's it. And no bargaining, negotiating, compromising, or pleading will get us off the hook. When the 2 pale riders show up, you are an absolute goner in the time/space capsule they operate [a mystifying cosmic order which is never properly explained]. Earthly elimination isn't even about malice: it's just a cold rule following a monotone exactitude that seems ruthless because it's relentless & irreversible. The extracting of souls collected in the palm from black rings that glow green are a super streamlined equivalent of ultra low-tech gizmos that you can imagine would be used by any 1990's two-bit generic presentation of an upgraded Horseman of Death.
As the subordinate reaper, Estevez who looks & sounds chillingly like his more famous brother, Martin, was originally asked to play the Mayor and with his darkened eyes and intense piercing glare that could laserburn through brick, he takes his role and runs with it. Square-faced Z'Dar [from a genetic disorder known as cherubism] is instantly recognizable as MANIAC COP. His voice is electronically altered and he sports bad blonde hair which he playfully insisted in the years afterwards was not a wig. He passed away at 64 on March 30, 2015 from cardiac arrest. Surprisingly, the movie won the 1991 Saturn Award [Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films] for Best Home Video Release which in fairness is understandable if you take extra exterior concepts of metaphysical boogeymen death-merchant agents; parallel universes; OBE's (out of body experiences) trapped in harrowing gloom; embodiments of almost hypnotic immortality; and dream-drenched divinity (albeit ominous) bleeding into reality. So yeah, wonders never cease but gold statue accolade aside, SOULTAKER at worst is a mundane limburger-stenched plodding clunker, and at best is amatuerish subpar mediocrity far more downright tepid than anywhere near remotely terrifying. For all its rough margins, flawed continuity hiccups, and skewering reviews of being nonsensical, the movie does have its fans from Variety and Billboard magazine to Joe Bob Briggs. Apparently, a sequel was planned with James Earl Jones, Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway and William Shatner(!) but production fell through and was never made. Schilling however, was unwilling to abandon the idea and kept the premise for her 2002 novel, 'Quietus'.
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