Do you like watching movies where all you want to do is bitch-slap the main character? Then you'll love Flatline. This is the story of Marc: a whiny, privileged twenty-something who thinks the world should revolve around him and his problems. The movie starts with Marc's dad dying in car accident. Rather than grieve like a normal person, Marc goes nuts, grabs a security guard's gun, and takes the medical staff hostage to try and force them to resuscitate his dad. Throughout the movie, we see flashbacks of Marc's life, including his previous struggles with the death of his mom. None of this makes Marc a sympathetic character. At no point in this movie will you care about Marc or his problems. All you will want to do is slap him for being so self-centered and stupid. Then, when the "twist" ending comes along, you'll want to slap your TV, too. This is one of the most incompetent movies I've ever seen. The production values are OK, and the acting is mediocre. That's not what makes it incompetent. What makes it incompetent is the awful, awful script. I'm actually not sure why this movie wound up in the "Faith and Spirituality" section of Netflix, because while it tries to pretend it's some sort of mediation on death and the meaning of life, what little there is in that vein might as well not even be there. This is, very simply, a terrible writer's attempt to write something inspirational. And it fails. Hard.This isn't even a "so bad it's good" movie, because the main character is so insufferable you won't even have fun lampooning it. Do yourself a favor and forget this movie even exists.
Review of Flatline
