With the Oscars behind us, I took the opportunity a couple of weekends ago – on Valentine’s Day, in fact – to watch Doctor Sleep, an early November release from writer-director and horror guru Mike Flanagan (Hush, Gerald’s Game) looking to capitalize on the dregs of spooky season, via Redbox. Doctor Sleep is based on a Stephen King novel of the same name, and acts as a sequel to The Shining, and I’ve read said novel, so as is often the case with adaptations I’ve read the source material for, I spent a somewhat bloated two and a half hours searching for narrative inconsistencies (and if we’re lucky, improvements). How romantic!
Kinky.
Doctor Sleep finds Ewan McGregor – who is actually less than two years older than the original child actor, so yay for accuracy – as an adult Daniel Torrance who’s still (forever) haunted by the events of The Shining, and who copes (at least in the beginning of the story) with crippling alcoholism. His nomadic lifestyle ultimately leads him and his shine to Frazier, Maine – Maine being a constant haunt of author Stephen King’s – where a helping hand or two push him towards sobriety and, ultimately, a job as an orderly that allows him to use his shine to ease the deaths of hospice patients (hence the moniker of Doctor Sleep). The resurgence of his shine leads him to contact with Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a teenaged girl with a shine far stronger than Dan’s, and whose talents have also attracted the attention of the True Knot, an RV-roaming group of immortals led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) who feed on the shine of children. What ensues is a conflict both mental and physical that carries Abra, Dan, and his friend Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis) well into harm’s way, culminating in a reluctant return to where Dan’s journey started.
Probably the fastest fan-service pitch that Doctor Sleep can throw right here.
As a whole, the cast of Doctor Sleep is more than adequately convincing, especially in the case of the seasoned talent of McGregor and the guiles of Rebecca Ferguson, who I really haven’t seen in much else besides the Mission: Impossible movies. Sprinkled in are some fun throwback roles ranging from minor (Alex Essoe recreates Shelley Duvall‘s Wendy Torrance with startling accuracy, especially vocally, and in some critical scenes, and is joined by Roger Dale Floyd as young Danny) to integral (Carl Lumbly‘s Scatman Crothers impression is pretty dynamite) to not-so-great, but we’ll get to Jack’s return a bit later. The roles are granted life by a sharp script with solid dialogue, albeit often colored by some very strange accents (Cliff Curtis’ mix of New England and Southern is downright bizarre, and Ferguson’s kind-of-English accent seems inconsistent but may be intentional to cloud her origins, but props to Bruce Greenwood for a spot-on Boston dialect), and are scored by some fine work from frequent Flanagan collaborators The Newton Brothers, who puzzlingly don’t have the same last name, nor is either of their last names Newton. Their creation is for the most part as minimalistic as ever, featuring little more than persistent heartbeats to raise tension and classic horror movie stringwork.
What I look like after my second cup of coffee.
Doctor Sleep‘s main drawback in my mind is probably what many – especially Kubrickian cinephiles – would describe as a strength: it seeks to please both fans of the book (me) and fans of the iconic director’s 1980 classic (not me). This is especially true of the last half hour or so of the movie, which strays completely from the book’s story, instead opting for a baffling extended Jack Nicholson cameo that doesn’t feature Jack Nicholson (after all, he’s retired from acting) and an entire Overlook sequence that doesn’t even track with the ending of The Shining in book form, in which the spooky hotel is completely destroyed by its own antagonistic and creepily personified boiler. In fact, the best part of this film’s ending was probably seeing that fiery destruction realized on screen now, 40 years later, but that bit of fan service failed to atone for the countless omissions of subplots (for one, Dan is actually revealed to Abra’s half-brother in the books, which does a lot to account for the origin of their extra-strong shine; for another, Flanagan’s creation fails to adequately account for what may well be the central narrative thread in the novel: Dan’s struggle with alcoholism, how it gives him a connection with his father, and how it affects his shine) and especially its seeming need for useless deaths.
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.
But Flanagan’s creation is visually stylish no doubt, and possesses genuine scares and suspense of a variety of flavors. It can be awfully hard to convey mental and internal struggles on-screen in a way that compares with the way that Stephen King can so convincingly write about them – this is one of many issues I had with Kubrick’s legendary film, and probably a big reason why King himself describes that film as “a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it” – but Flanagan does a decent job with it. This pervasive quandary, though, is also probably why the film version of King’s sequel to one of his most emblematic works features so much more carnage than the novel’s: it’s easier to show, and in most cases probably more impactful, especially when it’s as horrifyingly visceral as the True Knot’s cycling, or the Baseball Boy’s torturous demise. In my mind, the single scariest moment in the film portray’s Dan’s waking nightmare of sleeping next to the undead bodies of a recent one-night stand and her toddler-aged son (a setpiece that is again the result of a sadly omitted and recurrent subplot in the novel), but this could simply be the effect of me having familiarity with the novel. Either way, my main point is that when you’re trying to decide what the scariest moment of a movie is, it’s probably decently scary, and in the sense of being a compelling horror movie Doctor Sleep does its job.
Apparently Danny Torrance is a Trivial Pursuit fan. Who knew?
Doctor Sleep is bursting at the seams with Easter eggs and fan service for any fans of both Kubrick’s The Shining and Stephen King’s bibliography (did anyone else catch all the references to Ka?), and while it’s at least a half an hour too long, it’s fair to say that it’s a fun ride. While its attempts to please all crowds can be frustrating, especially to viewers who feel strongly about one origin story or another, they’re without question creative, not to mention well-executed. If you’re a King fan, or even just a horror fan, it’s a winning diversion, especially given the currently low cost and commitment of a Redbox rental.
Tuesdays with Cory 