The border between life and death has always intrigued me. Since childhood, I've been thinking about the meaning of life, the possibility of a kind of cycle, have always had these "empty" moments when I thought about where exactly we come from and where exactly we are heading to. But then I always ended up forgetting it when I had fun playing. But as I grew up, it became more and more present in my mind. And that's one of the reasons why I studied astrophysics along with my engineering diploma a few years back. Science is there to try answering as many questions as possible, but when it comes to matters of life and death, or the origin of life - the Big Bang - it finds its limits. I think the main problem is not death itself, it is birth : I mean, why do people worry about knowing how death works, if we haven't yet managed to explain birth ? In my view, it is linked with death ; when we manage to answer this "birth" issue, we will know everything about death too. But this is maybe a bit easier to say than actually do.
Of course I didn't think watching that movie would answer any of my questions. But I wanted it to act like an inspiring way for my mind to imagine things better, and maybe to end up getting a clearer idea of this, being positive about what a scriptwriter's view could bring to my own ideas. But I was wrong. I didn't like it that much. At the end of the day, you want originality, you want a breathtaking scenario, you want to see things out of the casual patterns most films take. I want to sum up that disappointing pattern that I've seen so many times quickly :
initial situation - disruptive element - incidents- solution element - final situation
That's it, I'm fed up with that pattern, it's what we learned at first grade. I don't know why it is supposed to be like that in order to be called a good scenario. But Hollywood & co (I don't wanna look for all of their names, you know who I'm talking about) productions should really question themselves at a time. I know they sell much, but as for me, this is the kind of film I'm just glad I saw for free thanks to Internet streaming. After saying all these generalities, I'm now going to analyze the film.
The first half was interesting, we quickly get to the point where the students end up doing their experiment. Until that point, I see nothing wrong. It keeps our attention. But then, awful, totally awful. I mean, to put it in a nutshell, the students do the so-called "flatlining" experiment, all, except one that is more careful than them and whose role is just to tell them morals about the "danger"; I call that type of character the "ethical defender"; they're basically there just to act like a voice for all of those skeptical people who think any breakthrough, any ambitious try, in whichever field, is a potential danger for humanity, like "oh no cloning, no, I don't want that, the world will become a horror movie with that", or "oh no, teleportation, why would we allow that, I don't want someone to teleport inside my house" ; you get the narrow-minded mentality ; well I hope that doesn't transcribe most people's minds, but I'm not very optimistic about that. Talking about cloning, I'm soon gonna make an analysis of another film which is focused on that controversial subject, so stay tuned, I will also give my opinion on that. Anyway, the film then focuses on the way every single student who tried this experiment feels after it, and in a very mediocre way. I mean, what does the fact you spent a few minutes dead has to do with your brain configuration ? I'm totally skeptical about that. And why would you suddenly feel more guilty about things you did supposedly wrong in the past, at a point when it drives you crazy and makes you see hallucinations ? I hate those movies where things only happen inside the characters' brains. I can't identify. I feel lost. I am among these people who manage to control everything they could eventually feel, and my mentality is to never look back, as I try to do everything the best way anyway. No fucking regret. So you can understand how that type of movie pissed me off (sorry for the bad language, I tried to find other words, but none describe it best). I was expecting something different, linked with the fact they had opened a door to another dimension, and other types of lives would try to come inside our own dimension, that's what I thought it was about when I saw the trailer. But after seeing the movie, I actually realized all the best parts were in that trailer, isn't that funny ?! The fact every single character has to deal with his/her past was just something so mainstream... I was not expecting a mainstream scenario at all by choosing to watch this movie. Basically, they all end up managing to solve their problems linked with their "brain experience to death" that brought back those memories...for example one of them goes and apologizes to a girl she pissed off during her school years. Another one apologizes to a dead person she didn't manage to save at the hospital. Well, basic things. Nothing too out of the typical scenarios. No innovation. No trying to give any hint of an answer to those big questions linked with life and death. Not even a little try. If you just wanna make a movie about people solving their life problems, you don't need to make them do these experiments before. Indeed, if you take out the first part of the film and the parts where they're doing the flatliner-experiment, I'm sure you would think this is the typical mainstream movie about people's vain lives and vain time-wasting preoccupations. Oh yes, and one of the characters dies in an accident by the way. Falls of her balcony because of pure craziness linked with her altered mind that makes her see her dead sister that she killed when she was driving her car at the beginning of the movie. So the other students do something like a "happy end", saying she learned them a lesson (in which fucking way ?) and destroy her papers and laptop linked with the experiment at the end, I guess all are happy, typical happy end, like "everything back to normal" (and we haven't had any feeling it would end in any other way).
No creativity, no real purpose, that kind of movie should usually be judged by the way it tries to give something creative your mind can play with, like an original answer to these death questions we all have. So I'm more than disappointed. You can see it and make your own idea about it though.
To sum it up : enticing trailer, good introduction, but the rest of it was worldclass garbage.
