'Flatliners' Returns for a Darker Look at Life After Death

Flatliners, the latest retro cinematic reboot, opens this weekend and once again follows five medical students who ask the big question: "What happens after we die?"

For the benefit of science, the group—played by Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, and Kiersey Clemons—decide to find out: climbing onto the gurney, volunteering to have their hearts stopped, seeing what's beyond, and (hopefully) returning to life before brain death kicks in.

The original Flatliners (1990) was written by Peter Filardi, who gets a story credit on the 2017 version, and featured the biggest stars of the day: Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, and Billy Baldwin. Sutherland is in the new one, too, as a doctor-professor. It's only a cameo, but I found myself wanting to shout at the screen: "Head to the basement! They're killing each other just like you did in 1990!" during tense moments.

The update, directed by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, was adapted/re-written by Ben Ripley and is a lot darker. It's more horror and retribution for harm done than life-after-death philosophizing in faded grandeur locations and righting wrongs for the sake of karma (man). We asked Oplev about this and more via email.

Why did you want to reimagine the story; were you a fan of the original?
The project was presented to me by Sony. They came and said they wanted to make a new version of Flatliners. I had a good knowledge of the old film because a former girlfriend of mine, who'd been an Eileen Ford model, had a part in it, as one of the girls Billy Baldwin is taking indecent photos of. I was fascinated by the original—killing yourself, traveling to check out the kingdom of death, and relying on your friends to bring you back? That's such an outrageous plot.

I felt it could be worked into a reinterpretation of the old film—paying homage—but for a new generation "flatlining." And I also felt it could be a film that takes the temperature of our time, looking at the pressure young people face: around education, the desperation to be special, to be somebody, to get the good career —really examine the competitiveness of our time for young people today and how that could be a motivation for them to flatline.

I watched both versions back to back and was shocked at how much medicine has changed in 27 years. In the original, the Near Death Experiences (NDE) were tracked through handwritten charts and self-reported post-life visions. The 2017 sequel is a sci-tech exponential leap into the future. This time, as the students are killed, and brought back, their brains are digitally scanned and analyzed, hooked up to monitoring devices and surrounded by machines.

What medical due diligence did you do in preparation for the film?
I had several conversations with neuroscientists and visited the neuroscience lab at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). We spoke to medical students there, and read up on all the research on how long you could survive without your brain cells dying, as well as people's documented experiences of Near Death Experiences. We also worked with medical consultant Lindsay Somers. She ran a bootcamp for our actors in Toronto, turning them into medical students in record-breaking time. I was obsessed by having the medical procedures in the movie be as realistic as possible.

Are you fascinated about what happens after we die? Would you ask a friend to flatline you?
I've kinda already been there. I've been through a lot of crazy situations in my life. Like driving my motorbike on the Autobahn in Germany and tipping over the Alps and nearly dying. But, like the Diego Luna character in Flatliners, I've been to hell and back, and don't need to go there before my time is up.

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What does the medical profession say about NDEs post-flatlining? There is a body of scientifically challenging academic research but—as you might expect—opinions differ widely, from "It's all just chemical bursts throughout the brain as the body releases its grip on life" to wondering whether there really is something beyond what we know.

"Imaging studies on cardiac patients who survive near-death experiences, have shown damage in both gray and white matter without brainstem impact," Dr. Lukasz Konopka, Executive Director at Chicago's Spectrum Center for Integrative Neuroscience, wrote in a 2015 paper. "Apparently, these and other studies reveal common areas involved in the near-death experiences that include the occipital cortex, frontal lobes, hippocampus, basal ganglia, amygdala, and, often, the temporal/parietal junction. When the brain undergoes decreased oxygenation, it may react in ways that culminate in a patient's near-death experience."

Having covered himself by employing empirical reasoning, Dr. Konopka then admits there might be something beyond all this, but then brings in quantum physics, the go-to for scientists when faced with the unfathomable mysteries of life.

"To understand the abundance of near-death experiences in patients that apparently lack a functioning brain, we may need to step out of our currently accepted physiological paradigms to embrace other explanations of the near-death phenomenon. Perhaps, near-death experiences open a window to the concept of a universal consciousness that is free of time and space. The principles of quantum physics provide us the conceptual framework and tools for exploring the ubiquitous experience of death."

Seems like the medical profession jury is still out on NDEs then.

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