Diego Luna, Ellen Page and James Norton star in a scene from the movie "Flatliners." The Catholic News Service classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. (CNS/Sony)

By Catholic News Service

Interested in studying the physiology of death and the possibility of an afterlife, a medical student (Ellen Page) persuades a couple of her peers (James Norton and Kiersey Clemons) to stop her heart temporarily, then quickly revive her. When she returns with enhanced skills, others (including Nina Dobrev) decide to give mortality a spin, despite the disapproval of the wisest member (Diego Luna) of the protagonist’s circle of friends. Even he fails to foresee the eerie things that soon begin happening to the revivified, however, all of them in some way connected to dark secrets from the past.

Director Niels Arden Oplev’s tepid thriller, a sequel of sorts to the eponymous 1990 film, has a basically sound moral outlook as far as forgiveness and honesty about past misdeeds are concerned. But a couple of liaisons among the future physicians are not at all what the doctor ordered.

Fleeting gory violence, semi-graphic casual sex, partial nudity, mature themes including abortion, about a half-dozen uses of profanity, at least one rough and several crude terms. The Catholic News Service classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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