I recently listed my 45 favorite movies, and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was on there. Additionally, starting around my high school years, I was very much into the works of Stephen King, and the first of his books I read was The Shining. Now we have an adaptation of the story Doctor Sleep which has the unenviable task of being a sequel to both (and this time with King’s blessing).
Fortunately, writer/director Mike Flanagan may be up to the task. He’s a veteran of the horror genre, but the only thing I know him for is the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House. That was a well-crafted creepfest, a show that gradually added slow dread to provoke scares, and that sort of psychological horror is the kind I tend to prefer.
So, he may be the best possible choice for Doctor Sleep. And, for the most part, the movie works. It’s not in Kubrick’s style, and that’s a good thing. If anything, Flanagan gives his characters time to let the audience get to know them, and that includes the movie’s villains.
Ewan McGregor stars as the adult Dan Torrance, a recovering alcoholic who has a lot of somewhat literal demons in his past. He managed to survive the terrors of the Overlook hotel and his own near murder at his father’s hands. He’s still got the Shine, and he mostly uses it to give peace to dying patients at a hospice.
Meanwhile, there’s the True Knot, a cult-like group of people with their own Shines (or “Steam” as they call it) who prey on psychic children. They kidnap, torture, and drain the Shine out of these kids, killing the children in the process. Such an act slows their aging process, possibly allowing them to live if not forever, then for a good long time. And their leader, Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), sure is a potent psychic.
So, what happens when a particularly powerful 13 year old (Kyliegh Curran) surfaces, drawing the attention of both Dan and Rose in different ways?
The movie has a run time of roughly two and a half hours, and it does pace well. Flanagan’s script gives time to Dan, Rose, and young Abra Stone, allowing all three to develop as something of well-developed characters. Curran and Ferguson both do fine, though McGregor seems to be somewhat one-note in his delivery at times, and I have no idea what accent he seems to be doing. Is it supposed to be New England?
Now, most of the movie is very much its own animal. It’s not really trying to tell the same story as The Shining. True, the movie does, as the trailers promise, return to the Overlook for a final showdown. Flanagan does copy many of the familiar sights from Kubrick’s movie, and it’s an effective pay-off.
Does it hold a candle to Kurbick’s classic? Not really, but that one’s a classic. But Doctor Sleep isn’t trying to for most of the movie, and that’s to Flanagan’s credit. With an aura of dread over the whole movie, fans will probably not think it on par with the original, but it does largely justify its own existence.
Grade: B+
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