The review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes reports that 50% of critics give the film a positive review based on 54 reviews, with the critical consensus "While it boasts an impressive cast, striking visuals, and an effective mood,
Flatliners never quite jolts its story to life." On
Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating to reviews, the film has a score 55 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. In her review for
The New York Times, Caryn James wrote, "when taken on its own stylish terms,
Flatliners is greatly entertaining. Viewers are likely to go along with this film instantly or else ridicule it to death. Its atmospheric approach doesn't admit much middle ground." Critic
Roger Ebert praised the film as "an original, intelligent thriller, well-directed by Joel Schumacher" and called the cast "talented young actors, [who] inhabit the shadows with the right mixture of intensity, fear and
cockiness". But Ebert criticized
Flatliners for "plot manipulation that is unworthy of the brilliance of its theme. I only wish it had been restructured so we didn't need to go through the same crisis so many times." Similarly,
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone magazine praised the film's young stars, but complained that "by dodging the questions it raises about life after death,
Flatliners ends up tripping on timidity. It's a movie about daring that dares nothing."
Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "D" rating and
Owen Gleiberman wrote, "What isn't in evidence is the sort of overheated lunacy that made the
William Hurt speed-freak trip movie
Altered States (1980) such delectable trash.
Flatliners is
camp, but of a very low order. Schumacher is too intent on pandering to the youth market to take the mad risks and plunges that make for a scintillating bad movie." In contrast,
The Washington Posts Rita Kempley loved the film, calling it: "a heart-stopping, breathtakingly sumptuous haunted house of a movie". The film has become a
cult film.
Matt Zoller Seitz, in his review of the 2017 remake, described the 1990 original as a "
gothic self-help drama". ==Soundtrack==