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Based at the Skeldale Veterinary Centre, in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, the modern, relocated practice...
William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life
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General Sherman's 1864 burning of Atlanta solidified his legacy as a ruthless leader. Yet Sherman...
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
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Darwin's Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory
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Disco thumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the...
Darwin
Charles Darwin and Philip Appleman
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The impact of Charles Darwin's work on Western civilization has been broad and deep. As much as...
The Sound and the Fury: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism
William Faulkner and Michael Gorra
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William Faulkner's provocative and enigmatic 1929 novel, The Sound and the Fury, is widely...
Black Mirror - Season 3
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Black Mirror is a British science fictiontelevision anthology series created by Charlie...
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Elizabeth Ammons
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In the nineteenth century, Uncle Tom's Cabin sold more copies than any book in the world except the...
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Flatliners (2017) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
But the concept was sufficiently enticing – who isn’t a little bit intrigued by the question of “what’s beyond”? – that Cross Creek Pictures thought it worthy of dusting off and giving it another outing in pursuit of dirty lucre. But unfortunately this offering adds little to the property’s reputation.
In this version, the lead role is headed up by Ellen Page (“Inception”) who is a great actress… too good for this stuff. Also in that category is Diego Luna, who really made an impact in “Rogue One” but here has little to work with in terms of backstory. The remaining three doctors – Nina Dobrev as “the sexy one”; James Norton (“War and Peace”) as “the posh boy” and Kiersey Clemons as the “cute but repressed one”, all have even less backstory and struggle to make a great impact.
Still struggling to get the high score on Angry Birds: from left to right Ray (Diego Luna), Sophia (Kiersey Clemons), Marlo (Nina Dobrev), Courtney (Ellen Page) and Jamie (James Norton).
Also putting in an appearance, as the one link from the original film, is Kiefer Sutherland as a senior member of the teaching staff. But he’s not playing the same character (that WOULD have been a bloody miracle!) and although Sutherland adds gravitas he really is given criminally little to do. What was director Niels Arden Oplev (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) thinking?
In terms of the story, it’s pretty much a re-hash of Peter Filardi’s original, with Ben Ripley (“Source Code”) adding a few minor tweaks to the screenplay to update it for the current generation. But I will levy the same criticism of this film as I levied at the recent Stephen King adaptation of “It”: for horror to work well it need to obey some decent ‘rules of physics’ and although most of the scenes work (since a lot of the “action” is sensibly based inside the character’s heads) there are the occasional linkages to the ‘real world’ that generate a “WTF???” response. A seemingly indestructible Mini car (which is also clearly untraceable by the police!) and a knife incident at the dockside are two cases in point.
Is there anything good to say about this film? Well, there are certainly a few tense moments that make the hairs on your neck at least start to stand to attention. But these are few and far between, amongst a sea of movie ‘meh’. It’s certainly not going to be the worst film I see this year, since at least I wasn’t completely bored for the two hours. But I won’t remember this one in a few weeks. As a summary in the form of a “Black Adder” quote, it’s all a bit like a broken pencil….. pointless.