Take a near-death head trip, and hear a whole lot of heavy breathing, in a new trailer for Niels Arden Oplev's (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) upcoming Flatliners revival about a new team of med students who open up a door to the afterlife and find more than they bargained for. The new incarnation lives in that modern studio movie liminal space between a remake, reboot, and sequel. It's essentially a remake, taking the concept and applying it to a new set of characters, but original cast member Kiefer Sutherland will reprise his role as Nelson, who is now a professor at the medical university.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of this movie. It's not a bad idea remake Flatliners; it was a solid idea for entertaining genre fare in the 90s and the premise has a timelessness that could make it work today, especially with the significant technological advances that have been achieved in the interim, but I haven't seen anything so far that's convincing of quality or imagination. I like this trailer better than the first, but catchy marketing does not a quality movie make. Plus, it looks like Diego Luna is mostly there to make out with Nina Dobrev, and I'm not opposed to it, it just doesn't give me a lot of faith in his character's life span. I try not to judge movies by how much Diego Luna they have in them, but it happens.

Flatliners also stars Ellen Page and James Norton and arrives in theaters on September 29. Watch the new trailer below.

Here's the official synopsis:

In Flatliners, five medical students, obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond the confines of life, embark on a daring and dangerous experiment: by stopping their hearts for short periods of time, each triggers a near-death experience – giving them a firsthand account of the afterlife. But as their experiments become increasingly dangerous, they are each haunted by the sins of their pasts, brought on by the paranormal consequences of trespassing to the other side.

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Image via Sony

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