Well, at least now you know where that incessant high-pitched beeping sound is coming from. Based on 32 reviews, the newly released Flatliners currently holds a zero-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 3.5 out of ten. The audience score is slightly higher at 45 percent. Vulture’s own David Edelstein described the film, which stars Ellen Page and serves as the sequel to the 1990 sci-fi horror flick of the same name, as “embarrassing, third-rate, and unrevivable.†The dire moviegoing consensus might offer an explanation as to why Sony Pictures did not screen the film before its release or debut it in theaters on Thursday night. Of course, there is still a possibility that other reviews might help resuscitate the movie’s terminal rating, but then, as the trailer suggests, the film might return from the afterlife followed by some sort of evil-spirit version of Flatliners, and you know that one is probably even worse.
Update, October 2: Thanks to a single Australian film critic, Flatliners’ Rotten Tomatoes score has, fittingly, returned from the dead. Vicky Roach, writing for Australia’s Daily Telegraph, wrote that the remake “nails the horror elements,†but that “the filmmakers reveal themselves to be surprisingly gutless.†Roach’s review feels more meh than outright positive, but Rotten Tomatoes has declared it the movie’s lone “fresh†review. The remake movie now stands at 3 percent.