Flatliners (2017) Movie Ending Explained

Last updated on October 3rd, 2024 at 10:51 pm

Flatliners (2017) is a horror thriller movie directed by Niels Arden Oplev. Flatliners is a might be “flat” on the outside but on the inside it’s full of energy and excitement. The film starts out with a bang and never lets up. It’s an intense thriller that will keep you on your toes the entire time. The ending is also very satisfying, leaving you wanting more. If you love thrillers, then flatliners is definitely worth watching.

Flatliners Ending Explained and Plot Story in Details

* * * Spoiler Alert – If you haven’t seen the movie yet, turn back now! * * *

Courtney Holmes and her young sister Tessa are driving in the film’s opening scene. During a moment of distraction, Courtney hits a truck and swerves off a bridge, drowning Tessa.

Courtney is now a medical student nine years later. During the examination, her patient asks if she has lost someone. As well as her, we meet her colleagues Marlo and Ray, who are handling a patient who had just been injured.

Researching the afterlife is what Courtney is doing in the library. One of the students, Sophia, began crying because she was overwhelmed by her work.

She also receives pressure from her mother. During their time outside the library, Courtney talks with her in a friendly manner.

Her colleagues temporarily suspend her heart rate for sixty seconds to document her brain activity.

Read more, Room for Rent (2019)

Courtney cannot be revived within sixty seconds, and Jamie and Sophia become panicked. They find Ray, and he helps them revive her.

Courtney’s hippocampus appears enlarged in the scan of her brain with Marlo. A recipe from her grandmother is used to make bread for class the next day. Courtney has a vision of someone in her tub, which frightens her as she sits alone in her tub.

A vision of Jamie riding his motorcycle with his ex-girlfriend Alicia appears to him. As darkness falls, she disappears. During a hospital visit, Jamie gives a patient medicine that other doctors did not think of. A menacing vision of Alicia also appears to him.

They spend three minutes next to the flatline, Sophia, Marlo, Jamie, Courtney, and Ray. A bloody “MURDERER” is written at the bottom of the pool as Marlo plays the violin and swims. Courtney sees Tessa’s body in a car filled with water before she snaps out of it.

While driving, Courtney was distracted by her phone. In an extended flashback, we see her on the phone. Tessa’s death was caused by her accident.

Alicia haunts Jamie to the point that she stabs his hand. In a video, Courtney explains that she did not experiment for scientific purposes. Later, Marlo retrieves Courtney’s phone from the morgue but finds her dead. In another vision, Sophia sees Jamie taunting her for an affair with her.

Sophia and Jamie set out to apologize to those they had wronged. The first time Jamie meets Alicia’s son is when he goes to find Alicia. After Ray learns she changed Cyrus’s cause of death, Marlo and Ray argue. An image of Cyrus suffocating Marlo with a plastic bag attacks her.

She is unable to wake up despite the efforts of her friends. It is only after Ray discovers that she is in the hospital parking garage that she realizes where she is. Marlo has already flatlined when the three rush to the basement.

Eventually, she forgives herself with the help of Courtney’s words. Despite her near-death state, her friends revived her and placed her on probation. A bar awaits them to celebrate Courtney’s life as they throw her laptop into the sea.

As Courtney tells Marlo, she needs to forgive herself and begins to get her bearings back.

They throw away their laptop, which contains all the evidence of their flatlining, into the ocean, giving up on flatlining forever. Alicia and their son are crucial to Jamie, so he decides to remain in the area. At a restaurant, the friends hear Courtney play the piano piece. In honor of her memory, they drink.

The movie ends here.