Arrow Films, out now

Five medical students subject themselves to a daring experiment, to temporarily induce their own deaths, hoping to glimpse the afterlife before being brought back to life.

Joel Schumacher’s (The Lost Boys) 1990 high concept, medical horror thriller is well worth a fresh viewing, and is certainly preferable to the 2017 remake. Here it gets the Arrow 4K upgrade and a bunch of new extras, making it a vast improvement on the 2007 vanilla Blu-ray by Sony Columbia.

Featuring a great cast of up-and-coming stars (Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon) the movie follows arrogant medical students who dice with death by temporarily killing and reviving themselves. Each ‘death’ is longer than the last, and they collectively become addicted to the thrill. But the experience releases skeletons from their closets and these past sins come back to haunt them.

With photography by Jan de Bont (Basic Instinct), this is a film where every shot is bathed in coloured light, from the golden glow of magic hour, to the overly blue night scenes, embellished with neon. Filters and gels are employed at every turn – an 80s trope if ever there was one. The hyper-realised colour is boosted even further by the Dolby Vision (HDR compatible), which turns everything up to 11, particularly the saturated dreamscapes. Ultimately, it’s a load of flashy, enjoyable nonsense, but you can’t doubt the craft in its construction.

Arrow’s new 4K restoration from the original negative has been approved by Jan de Bont. There’s a new audio commentary by critics Bryan Reesman and Max Evry and new video interviews with screenwriter Peter Filardi, Jan de Bont, first assistant director John Kretchmer, production designer Eugenio Zanetti, composer James Newton Howard, orchestrator Chris Boardman and costume designer Susan Becker, as well as the theatrical trailer, an image gallery and reversible sleeve.

Verdict: Style over substance for sure, so why not bathe in the 80s visual excesses in the best possible presentation. 7/10

Nick Joy

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