With it's Ellen Page starring sequel arriving on September 29th, 2017, and that I just re-watched it, I thought it would be a good time to talk about Joel Schumacher's 1990 haunted psychological thriller Flatliners. The premise was simple but effective; a group of medical students experiment with near death experiences to see if the stories of lights, and tunnels, and voices told by other near death survivors holds any water. What they discover are very personal experiences that bring secrets/demons of their pasts into their physical reality. It stars Kiefer Sutherland (Lost Boys), Kevin Bacon (Friday The 13th), Julia Roberts (Erin Brockavich), Oliver Platt (X-Men; First Class), and William Baldwin (Backdraft). This is my favorite film Schumacher ever made and his best looking one. He was backed up by cinematographer Jan De Bont, production designer Eugenio Zanetti, and set decorator Anne Kuljian and together they created a very cool, very alive, stylish film that had touches of gothic horror, crime noir, scenes straight out of a comic book, and washed in lighting that almost rivals some of DePalma's or Argento's work.
Flatliners was one of those films that I watched repeatedly on cable and also rented a fair number of Silence Of The Lambs had ridden in on the wave of slick adult horror *cough cough* THRILLERS, like Jacob's Ladder. Despite the genre label, Flatliners had a fair amount in common with Frankenstein and dealt with some very heavy spiritual issues. Regardless of what it was called, the important thing is that it's a smart, well made movie that offers a very satisfying experience. It has strong characters, some decent scares, high re-watchability, and ultimately a decent pay off. Schumacher had already proven to be an adept film maker with a good eye. Tonally his films were pleasing, even if they weren't always my thing. The last film of his I enjoyed was the every-man-at-the-end-of-his-rope hit Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall.
times. It came out after the 80s slasher boom had run out of steam and with the run away success of
Schumacher would betray me though. Stab me in the heart through my back even, when he made the shit-tastic Batman and Robin and Batman Forever. Yes, stellar set design, amazing lighting, yes, yes. But. There is not one other good thing to be said about these films. At all. From the casting on these films were utter mistakes, culturally tone deaf, and killed Batman in the cinema for years. Schumacher wanted to do a wild, campy, fun take on The Dark Knight that combined the feel of the two previous Burton films, with the colorful world of the 60s TV show. As far as I'm concerned, the Burton films were already a big step in the wrong direction and Schumacher just wheeled the whole franchise off a cliff. It wasn't because Batman had landed in the hands of a bad director, it was because a good director didn't respect the character enough-or perhaps have enough faith in the character to further his career in a notable way, so he decided to have fun and collect his check.
Returning to Flatliners after so many years really made me sad for what could have been. Take the
film and imagine Chicago as Gotham City (Nolan shot his DK trilogy there). Think about the themes and techniques Schumacher employed; there's touches of horror, science fiction, action, mystery, redemption, fear, heroism...If you change the plot to fit a Batman story, Joel Schumacher would have defined the character for a generation or more. It could have been a small, claustrophobic, mystery that took the character seriously, while embracing all the elements of the comic (the other-wordly, sci-fi, super human aspects) that Nolan flat out ignored. Ras Al Ghul could be hundreds of years old in that version, instead of just a man, you could imagine gods and monsters coming out of the wood work, and even an alien savior. Baldwin would have made a good Batman/Bruce Wayne. Sutherland could have pulled off a Joker to rival Ledger's performance, Roberts would have been a far more comic accurate Vicky Vale, Bacon would slay as Scarecrow, and Platt would have been a great Penguin.
I love Nolan's films, but while they are top notch Nolan films, they're only so-so Batman films, because he doesn't embrace the of the levels of the character. Which is where Burton and Schumacher fail as well. They only adapt Batman at a surface level and never dig into the depths of what makes the character so weird, and fun, and dark, and scary, and absurd. Did Snyder capture any or all of that in the new DC cinematic universe? I think we have to wait for Justice League to really judge. I have high hopes and really like Affleck as Bats. What's even more exciting is the fact that Matt Reeves will helm the solo Batman film and I base my excitement solely on Let Me In, which isn't just a great remake, but a great film in it's own right. He gets characters, atmosphere, and horror, in much the same way Schumacher did with Flatliners.
So, here we go with the next installment of our new series DEAD OF WINTER, where we explore through new reviews the best winter themed horror films. Today I'm tackling a film that I'd just as quickly hold up as a perfect example that not all remakes suck as I would THE THING or THE FLY; it's 2010's LET ME IN, starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Richard Jekins, Cara Buono, and Elias Koteas.
Before you roll your eyes and yell at me for not reviewing the original, let me direct you to another excellent review of both the original LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and LET ME IN, by one of our recent guest posters, Albert Muller. He wrote an impassioned piece about both films that is absolutely fantastic and you can read it HERE. I agree with every word of his review right down to slightly preferring the remake over the original for personal reasons. Additionally, for the purposes of this series, to review both on the heels of Muller's piece teeters on overkill. LET ME IN was already at the top of my list for this series before I read Muller's and I chose to not cut it, because of how highly I regard the film and how much I wanted to write about it too. I think there's enough room in the world for heaping piles of praise on a good movies anyway.
Ok! Onward!
Directed by Matt Reeves, who loved both the original film and the book it was based on, LET ME IN
was an honest and impassioned attempt to re-adapt the book with cues from the original movie and set it in a small town in New Mexico. The characters' names were Americanized and the actors were asked not to watch the original film before shooting. The effect, while not too far from the original, made for a deeply personal, beautiful, and truly creepy film. The cynics among us may cry that the re-make didn't change enough, but I disagree. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, as wonderful and engrossing as it is, has an emotional detachment that LET ME IN doesn't have. That may be a simple cultural disconnect with me, but I related more to Smit-McPhee's Owen than I did with Kare Hedebrant's Oskar, because I was Owen. I was a bullied little loner in a small American town in the 1980s.
LET ME IN, at heart, is a coming of age story of friendship between two outsiders. The vampire angle adds that level of tension and visual interest that sets the movie apart from a normal character drama. It's rarely excessive, even in an intense attack scene where we see Abby (Moretz) attack and kill a man in a tunnel-which is one of the film's most startling moments- Reeves is able to ramp up the tension with subtly, where most horror films would take the viewer into more visceral territory. Not that the film is lacking blood and gore, it's just doled out in a methodical pace, making those scenes more horrific, where they could have been cartoonish.
LET ME IN is such a lovely, slow burn descent into both friendship and the horrors the world lays
out for children. Smit-McPhee and Moretz fully embody the outsider, misfit, weirdo, that a lot us were/are. As I said, I was Owen and in a way Abby represents the books and movies that I fell in love with, that got me through my youth and gave me a reason to keep going, keep getting up, regardless of the bullying that I had waiting on me at school-hell, at home too. Abby does horrible things, she's a monster, but she's also Owen's friend. She provides him comfort and fills that void of loneliness. That's what Stephen King, Clive Barker, Wes Craven, and John Carpenter did for me with their work. I don't know that John Lindqvist intended his book, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, to be a metaphor for horror nerds, but I see it as that. And the final bloodbath, when Abby makes all of Owen's bullies pay for their transgressions-that wasn't too far from what I wanted to do the kids at school who knocked me down in the hall, smacked my books out of my hands, called me faggot, ruined my lunch, made me afraid to go into the bathroom, ganged up and beat the shit out of me...I would have laughed to see them ripped to shreds and I'm not a violent person.
The winter setting itself is almost a character in the film. Every out door shot really telegraphs just how frigid it is and may also be seen as a metaphor for Owen's life. Especially, the frozen loneliness of the playground at night where he encounters Abby. Before she appears to him, Owen is like the moon, alone in the cold darkness (Muller also notes a reference to the moon, just pointing that out lest one thinks I lifted an idea). Reeves and company did a great job with the setting and bringing the winter chill into the audiences' theater/home. I've rarely found a movie so engrossing that even the sets can trigger emotions and physical reactions.
Flatliners was one of those films that I watched repeatedly on cable and also rented a fair number of Silence Of The Lambs had ridden in on the wave of slick adult horror *cough cough* THRILLERS, like Jacob's Ladder. Despite the genre label, Flatliners had a fair amount in common with Frankenstein and dealt with some very heavy spiritual issues. Regardless of what it was called, the important thing is that it's a smart, well made movie that offers a very satisfying experience. It has strong characters, some decent scares, high re-watchability, and ultimately a decent pay off. Schumacher had already proven to be an adept film maker with a good eye. Tonally his films were pleasing, even if they weren't always my thing. The last film of his I enjoyed was the every-man-at-the-end-of-his-rope hit Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall.
