So long awaited (and that’s understating it). The sequel to Stephen King’s The Shining, Doctor Sleep has been released. Based on the book of the same name and directed by Mike Flanagan who is currently Stephen King’s go to guy for his new adaptations, as well as being a new name in cinema horror. This was a film that brought a lot of skepticism to me, as the promotional material for the film sold imagery and soundtrack cues from the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film.
The story for those who haven’t read the books is this. Danny Torrence is grown up, he’s an alcoholic and trying to put the past of what happened at the overlook hotel done to him. He grows up trying to fix his life and comes across Abra. Another young girl who has similar if not stronger abilities to Danny when he was young. She is in danger of getting haunted by a group of villains known as the true knot whose sole purpose of survival and power is by absorbing the life and essence of children who possess the shining or what the true knot call steam.
Everybody probably knows this already, but the Kubrick film that came out in 1980 was famously hated by Stephen King to the point that when bought back the rights for the film and TV adaption from Kubrick’s production team, he was sold it back on the agreement that he would no longer make fun of Kubrick’s film and vision or say anything negative towards what Kubrick done. However unfortunately Kubrick died and King went back carrying on voicing his opinion on Kubrick and his film. He is now currently the champion of Doctor Sleep, praising it for what it’s done and how it’s been made and bigging up Mike Flanagan in the process.
The thing about Doctor Sleep is this. At its core is a film by a filmmaker who wanted to do the most faithful adaptation of the novel as well as pay homage to the horror film that made him want to do the sequel in the first place. So when looking at the promotional material and we see the carpet from the overlook hotel and Danny looking through the broken, axed in door by his father from his first stay, sold us that this was going to be a tie in sequel to the film.
The problem is though that when Mike Flanagan was putting this script together he not only added Doctor Sleep and Kubrick’s film together but he decided to put in all that Kubrick had removed from the original book that he felt wouldn’t work. Resulting in a film that feels like a cluttered and bloated and scenes that are very out of place in a contrasting story. You get sequences involving a horrific child murder and then followed up with an immediate ghost interaction.
The other problem is that when you base a sequel with a supernatural threat to a film that had little to no supernatural presence in whatsoever it comes across jarring and out of place. The reality of the situation of what you were watching was less believable when throughout the reference points of Doctor Sleep making call backs to The Shining that existed in its own universe and not the world that Kubrick had already established. As much as the performances and characters of the true knot were good, they came across as almost pantomime. Not because of anything over the top of silly, just more that in a world where before, when watching a husband and father slowly lose his mind and try to kill his wife and son in possibly the most horrifying and eerie depictions of madness and suddenly we are following a group of ragtag soul vampires, it changes the shift and the tone of the film entirely.
The biggest problem the film really has that in context as a follow up sequel to the novel it works perfectly. If you were to remove the Kubrick film entirely and just read both books together the sequels make a lot of sense in that world and universe. This was something that stinted itself when the film was made. Partly because Flanagan’s over use of all the properties involved and the fact that he had to make things simplistic in a sense to make you know you were watching a horror film for general audiences despite the fact that King’s horror stories are easily translatable for film from the text, so it really doesn’t need that much spoon feeding.
And you know I hate to say this because I understand that at the heart of this film was a filmmaker who wanted to do justice to the novel of both Doctor Sleep and The Shining while paying tribute to the Kubrick film…But it doesn’t stand on the shoulders of giants that Kubrick achieved the first time. Now King hated The Shining, but Kubrick’s Shining works mainly because he took the source material, scraped away all the fat and fluff from the novel to give us something pristine and perfect and what many consider (including myself) the greatest horror film ever made.
Flanagan knows this. He has admitted in countless interviews and articles on how the The Shining affected him in terms of wanting to be a filmmaker and make another great horror film like The Shining. But at the end of the day Mike Flanagan isn’t Stanley Kubrick. But Flanagan wanted so desperately to be Kubrick so much that when you see not only a reference but a visual homage and an almost perfect casting of an actor who looks like the original actor (only less abused), you really have to ask yourself who is he making this film for? Is for him or is it for King? And the main big question is does the film work in terms of cinema for what he’s done? And the answer is no.
It’s a confused cluttered quiet boring film, with naff CGI, naff special effects, naff Ewan Macgregor being American and all the while Kubrick laughing in his grave knowing once again that he has won the argument over King about his interpretation.
Now after watching Doctor Sleep, I left with this feeling of partly exhaustion because it’s just too long, it’s way too long and I began to feel the length of the film by the amount of times that I looked at my watch throughout certain scenes and throughout other parts of the film. I also left with a feeling of confusion on how King can champion this film so much considering in the 2 and a half hours of the films run time, an hour and a half of the film is just Flanagan gushing over Kubrick’s Shining. It became so noticeable that it was almost sickly.
In the end, Doctor Sleep had the potential to be something more than it was, but because of an identity crisis and fear of having to please everyone in the making of it, it shot itself in the foot and became destined to be another one of those Stephen King adaptations to get lost in a sea of mediocrity. If you are interested in Doctor Sleep. Please read the book. This year has been weird for Stephen King adaptations. With 3 adaptations which included Pet Sematary, IT part 2 and Doctor Sleep and only one out of that 3 was kinda alright. Pet Sematary is still the worst out of the lot.
If I had to give this film any positive comments …Rebecca Ferguson as Rose The Hat. Beautiful woman, great performance…Gorgeous feet. (kidding)