Courtney is a medical student in a competitive hospital. She’s not content with just being the best, she wants to be a pioneer, and she’s got her eye on quite the break-through: she wants to be an expert in the afterlife. To that end, she recruits a few brave colleagues to do some top-secret experimenting in the hospital’s basement. She somehow convinces them to stop her heart for a full minute before resuscitating her. When she wakes up, her brain is re-wired, keyed up to excel, to remember everything, to reach further, better, higher. So of course her fellow students are jealous, and curious, and lineup to have their hearts stopped.
Ellen Page is kind of the coolest. I respect her. She makes everything she’s in better. 
But you can hardly make something better if it isn’t remotely good to begin with. The thing is, the idea behind this movie is probably solid. But this movie takes an interesting premise and immediately flushes it down the nearest toilet. It takes philosophy and science and turns it into a party drug, giving lots of opportunity for shirtless dancing but not a whole lot else. It’s supposed to be a horror movie and it does lazily throw some things at the screen in order to startle you, but it doesn’t try hard enough at anything. I don’t even think the original was all that great, but trying to make a second cup of tea from the same old tea bag makes for a very weak cuppa.
The most character-building the movie strives for is to give each student a name, and a haircut. Basically they’re all greedy, selfish, horny little pricks. Shouldn’t med students know better than to intentionally die?
Newsflash, guys: bringing stuff back from the dead is rarely a good idea. It’s funny that the director made a movie about this but never took the lesson to heart.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 
The most memorable thing about the original–perhaps the only memorable thing–is how much wire-rim glasses made Julia Roberts look like The Incredible Mr. Limpet.
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I remember liking the original one, though I don’t remember much about it 😀 Sometimes remakes just fall… flat.
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Excellent review, I do love your turn of phrase. Cheers Jay.
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Doesn’t sound very good if there ws no character building.
greedy, selfish, horny little pricks. <—- So many people I know. lol
Bringing people back from the dead is not a good idea. I don't even recycle old girlfriends. Never works.
Have a good one.
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I really like the original film, so I’m a tad ambivalent towards this version.
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The only reason I would see it is because of Ellen but other than that. No.
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Not a real surprise here. Some movies (especially some classic movies) are just better to be left alone. The original movie was definitely great. I might watch this purely to see how awful it is…or maybe in some way it can still surprise me. Great post! 😊😊
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Some people found it laughably bad but I didn’t find it interesting in any way, I guess. It’s not even decent enough to be so bad you can entertain yourself by making fun of it.
There’s so much it could have done, and it’s nearly 30 years later, but somehow really had nothing new to say.
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Hmmm…okay…well, this has now gone to the totally skip this list lol 😂😂
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I really liked the original, but can’t people just leave well enough alone? Can’t believe there aren’t new stories to be told.
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Wait? What’s this now!? I’m fond of the original, good idea, not exceptional, it works and the cast is engaging.
They’re really just remaking everything, eh?
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LOL, the last sentence. I kind of liked the original, but not enough to give this a try.
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