Summary:
Years after the events of “The Shining”, Dan Torrance fights to protect a girl who possesses the same psychic ability as him.
My Thoughts:
As a whole, I really like Stephen King- his books, his movies, his personal views- I think the guy is pretty great. I also think Stephen King has written so many stories over such a long period of time that he goes through phases where his quality swings between good and bad, and, taking that further, there are some film adaptations that are really good and some that are absolutely abysmal. Some of King’s stories are sort of boring, but they’re turned into movies because his name is attached (“Thinner”, “The Dark Half”); some of his stories are incredible, but they don’t translate well to screen (“Pet Semetary”, “It Chapter II”); there are other stories that have been turned into some of the finest films in existence (“The Shining”, “Shawshank Redemption”); and then there are the stories that are right in the middle in terms of quality, and they can make good or bad films (“Misery”, “1408”).
I’m a huge horror fan; my favorite horror film is “The Shining”, and I’ve read both “The Shining” and “Doctor Sleep”, and I enjoy both books (“Doctor Sleep” less so than “The Shining”, but it isn’t a bad story). As much as I really enjoy King, his films’ reputations are all over the place, and I didn’t know how to feel about this even after seeing the critical responses (right now the film is hovering around 77% on Rotten Tomatoes- not particularly great, but not terrible), so I avoided seeing this in theaters, figuring I’d save a few bucks and just rent it when it hit video. Furthermore, though I enjoyed “The Shining” book, I have to say that I prefer certain elements of the movie (I couldn’t care less about the living topiary animals- sorry, King). King has been particularly outspoken about not caring for the ending of Kubrick’s version “The Shining”; in King’s version The Overlook Hotel burns down with Jack Torrance inside of it, and in Kubrick’s version Jack freezes in the hedge maze outside, and there are other major differences too, like, for example, the fact that Dick Holloran (Scatman Crothers in “The Shining”) survives his trip back to the Overlook.
Now, as much as it pains me to say this, I didn’t think the “Doctor Sleep” book was amazing, but it certainly wasn’t the worst King book I’d read (in terms of TMM ratings, it would’ve received a 3.5/5). I thought there were plenty of cool ideas in the book, like Rose the Hat’s band of merry men, or just expanding the idea of the psychic shining ability so that King’s readers can begin to see how that power plays into other characters in other stories; particularly Mother Abigail in ‘The Stand’, but it could be argued that John Coffey in “The Green Mile” uses his healing powers with the shine, or Carrie White from “Carrie” uses a kind of shine to influence telekinesis. Because of the differences between Kubrick’s “Shining” and King’s “Shining”, the “Doctor Sleep” book could not exist in the same universe as the Kubrick film. And, since this film was clearly more concerned with totting itself as a sequel to Kubrick’s film than it was being a sequel to King’s novel, I was interested to see how director Mike Flanagan brought those worlds together.
I honestly thought this movie would be a bit of a failure, which is why my rating is as high as it is; this movie surprised really me.To both my disbelief and great satisfaction, this film melds the worlds of both film and novel in a way that seems to elevate the material from both, and while “Doctor Sleep” is neither a perfect sequel to King’s novel nor to Kubrick’s film, it succeeds in being a perfect middle ground for both. I’ve never seen a film do anything like it, it’s incredibly meta, and I found it to be rather impressive.
“The World is a Hungry Place. A Dark Place.”
Years after Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor, “The Ghost Writer”) and his mother Wendy (Alex Essoe, “Starry Eyes”) escaped from the Overlook Hotel he receives a mysterious message on his wall from a psychic girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran, “I Can I Will I Did”). The two maintain a sort of pen-pal relationship for a number of years. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson, “Mission Impossible: Fallout”) scours the country for psychic children on whom she can prey with her band of (for lack of a better word) psychic-vampires, including Cow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon, “Bone Tomahawk”), Snakebite Andi (Emily Alyn Lind, “Enter the Void”), and Grandpa Flick (Carel Struycken, “Gerald’s Game”). After Rose the Hat senses Abra, Dan and she starts to prepare for a battle that will determine their fates and the fates of those that they love for rest of their lives.
So, as I already mentioned above, I wasn’t overly impressed with the “Doctor Sleep” book. I’ll go so far as to say that I actually think the movie is a little better than the book (though I’m sure the biggest King fans will want to crucify me). I like King, but some his ideas, as I’ve already mentioned, don’t really translate well to screen, and this book had a few moments where I sort of was just wondering if anything exciting was going to happen. The first third of this book meanders aimlessly, giving us characters all over the country that have no real connection to one another until later (it feels sort of like the first three hundred pages of “The Stand” before Captain Tripps breaks out and kills 99% of the population- you know something is going to happen but getting to that happening takes a bit of patience). This movie also meanders aimlessly, but Mike Flanagan helps to make that meandering less painful, by giving fans of “The Shining” something to look for. This movie is stuffed to the gills with “Shining” Easter Eggs, from both the film and the movie, and that is what helps to bring this world to a happy middle ground. The way that the film inventively solves the inconsistencies also helps to make this film special, and for me, that more than made up for the meandering bits; it started to feel more like I was watching the foundations for something epic, instead of just waiting for something to happen.
While Mike Flanagan’s ability to merge the stories is what really blew me away about this film, there was plenty of other stuff to love too. Rebecca Ferguson freaking kills it as Rose the Hat. Ewan McGregor is perfectly fine as Dan Torrance. I liked Snakebite Andi, and Rose’s cronies far more than I thought I would. I loved the way that Flanagan handled the psychic abilities, particularly Rose’s farseeing ability (I don’t know what else to call it, so I’m borrowing Robin Hobbs’ phrase).
Verdict:
DO NOT go into this movie expecting a sequel to Kubrick’s “The Shining”; that would be an incredibly foolish thing to do. You can’t go into this film expecting anything close to Kubrick’s level of filmmaking, because while Flanagan is a competent horror director (check out “Oculus” or Netflix’s “Haunting of Hill House”) , he doesn’t hold a candle to Kubrick. This is not a perfect film; far from it. At the same time, this film still receives a 4/5 star rating from me because it managed to capture the spirit of the novel and replicate some of the atmosphere created by Kubrick, plus it did so in a way that was respectful to both storytellers. This isn’t a great movie; it’s not even the best Stephen King adaptation to come out in the past decade (I really liked “It Chapter I”), but it is far better than I ever expected it to be.
I liked this movie enough to know I’ll pick it up when it comes out on video, because I honestly wouldn’t mind doing a “Shining” and “Doctor Sleep” double feature someday.
Review Written By: