"Flatliners," the remake of the 1990 thriller, wasn't screened for critics, which is usually a sure sign that a studio knows it has a dud on its hands.
The film, which stars Ellen Page, Nina Dobrev and Diego Luna as medical students who get their kicks by temporarily stopping their hearts, opened today with not one positive review. (Reviews are still filtering in as critics finally get a chance to see it.) Audiences weren't too keen on it either, giving it a 45% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Cinemablend writes that the film "lacks a pulse" and is strictly "run of the mill."
Australian site FIlmInk calls it a "bland, flatly executed and joyless slog."
And Den of Geek UK, while apologizing for the obvious pun, writes, "it just lies there on the slab."
If you're planning on watching Flatliners, dig two graves: One for the remake, and one for your time. https://t.co/V9jWcRwbru
— Simon Miraudo (@simonmiraudo) September 28, 2017
IGN's review is the most positive of the bunch, saying "It falls flat as a horror movie but the cast is good enough, and the sci-fi concepts are interesting enough, to keep it from crashing completely."
Per Deadline, "Flatliners" didn't hold previews last night for audiences either. The film, which had a $20 million budget is "only expected to gross in the mid-to-high single digits at 2,552 venues." It's apparently too early for the audience-generated CinemaScore.
