Movies

No One On Rotten Tomatoes Likes The 'Flatliners' Remake

flatliners trailer
By Chris Evangelista

Like any year, 2017 has had some truly excellent films, and then it's also had some stinkers. As we approach the end of the year and enter awards season, get ready for more excellent films. For now, though, here come the summer runoffs – the films studios had no real faith in and dumped at the dead-end of September. Films like the Flatliners remake, which is now sitting at an uncomfortable 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, as the folks at MovieFone were kind enough to point out. Read more about the Flatliners negative reviews below.

Flatliners, a remake (and technically also a sequel) of a neon-lit 1990 thriller from director Joel Schumacher, focuses on several medical students (this time played by Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons) who find a way to come back from the dead, with spooky consequences. Columbia Pictures unceremoniously dumped the new Flatliners into theaters today after not much pre-release marketing, and the critics who went and saw it aren't very happy. For the sake of full disclosure, it's worth noting that the film was not screened for critics in advance, so anyone who saw it and filed a review today actually paid to see it.

And just what did these unlucky few think? Not much. "This Flatliners is in fact a new definition of 'meh,'" said the New York Times. "An agonizingly boring remake of a movie about the danger of bringing things back from the dead," was the word from IndieWire. "Flatliners 2017 is the same dumb movie as Flatliners 1990, minus most of the surface charisma," claims the AV Club. Of course, the original Flatliners wasn't exactly beloved either. It currently has a 49% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The current 0% rating for this new Flatliners officially makes it the worst reviewed film of 2017. Back in July, this "honor" was previously held by The Emoji Movie, which also briefly held a 0% rating. Since then, however, someone, somewhere, went ahead and gave The Emoji Movie a positive review, as the film now sits at 10% on Rotten Tomatoes. There you have it, folks – Flatliners, worse than The Emoji Movie. (Keep in mind that there are only 20 total reviews filed for the film at the time of this writing, so its rating could also improve over time.)

Flatliners joins a growing list of poorly reviewed films of the year, a list that includes Rings, Fifty Shades Darker, Transfomers: The Last Knight, The Mummy, and The House. As is always the case with Rotten Tomatoes scores, it's worth remembering that these ratings are not the end of the world. They are not the be-all, end-all in regards to a film's quality, but rather a snapshot of what certain critics think. If you happen to like a film that gets a supremely negative Rotten Tomatoes review, it's fine! Take the aforementioned The House, for example. Vulture just pointed out today that Chance the Rapper is having none of Rotten Tomatoes' BS regarding that film, highlighting a series of tweets from Lil Chano from 79th himself that defends the honor of the Will Ferrell/Amy Poehler comedy.

Take heart, Flatliners remake. There's probably someone out there, somewhere, who likes you.

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