This movie is not your traditional horror type film although it certainly has aspects of horror in it. Officially classified as a "science-fiction psychological horror" it is one of my favorite films of the early 90's.
Featuring a smorgasbord of the biggest stars of 1990, the real star of this film is hair care products because everyone's mop is just oh so perfect throughout the entire film. Seriously, you had to be alive in 1990 to understand the lunacy that was hair style at the time.
I am only reviewing this because apparently they remade this film and I am going to watch that right after I write this. I hope it does it justice but if it is anything like most remakes, they will not.
The story goes like this: Nelson Wright (Kiefer Sutherland) is a medical student and with his team of other mostly good-looking with exceptional hair fellow students they decide to induce death for 1 minute and then revive one another to see what happens after one dies. This is completely possible because medical students are given unlimited access to death inducing chemicals... OBVIOUSLY.
What they find on the other end is not exactly wonderful as it is mostly things memories of things that they did in their own lives that were less-than-virtuous. The major problem is that once they rejoin the real world after being revived that their misdeeds followed them back.
For Nelson Wright, his tormentor is BIlly Mahoney, a kid he relentlessly bullied as a child. Billy is now following him in real life and beating him up on a regular basis. The crazy thing is that no one else can see Billy and this leads to questions about how it is that he is physically hurt but whatever! It's a movie right?
I'm not going to say what happens to the rest of the Aqua Net crew because I really think this film is worth seeing. They didn't go too over the top with CGI because well, in 1990 CGI was pretty basic. Instead they relied on very good lighting techniques as well as creative sound choices. Joel Schumacher is the director, and he is pretty much a household name now but was on a run of successful films that I "kinda" liked including St. Elmo's Fire and The Lost Boys at the time.
This movie made an impressive more than $60 million at the box office, which isn't jack squat by today's standards but was a big deal in 1990. This movie has its detractors in the press both then and now, but I don't always agree with the professionals or the general public. I found this movie to be both thought-provoking and well shot. It is only after watching it now that I reflect on our hair choices during the 90's and wonder "why did we like that?"
on a scale of "urgh!" to "Wowsers!" i give Flatliners (1990) the rating of....
yip yip yip!