Doctor Sleep (2019) review

There have been countless adaptations of author Stephen King’s works over the years, and yet, amidst all the hits and the misses, there’s one that King has always had mixed feelings about. The film in question is The Shining, the 1980 adaptation of King’s 1977 novel of the same name. Despite attracting generally mixed reviews upon its initial release, the film has gone on to become a staple of the horror genre and one of the many classic outings from legendary director Stanley Kubrick. King, however, wasn’t too pleased with the film due to the many radical changes that Kubrick made to the story, including but not limited to an overall undermining of the main character Jack Torrance’s ‘everyman’ persona in favor of Jack Nicholson’s more unhinged characterization. This then led to King penning the script himself for a more faithful adaptation of the book via a 1997 miniseries, and in 2013, he released a follow-up novel, Doctor Sleep, which continued the story of Danny, the young son of Jack Torrance, as he matures into adulthood. But when it comes to this novel’s new film adaptation, it takes the bold route of trying to combine elements from both Stephen King’s Shining novels and Stanley Kubrick’s iconic yet not quite faithful film adaptation of the 1977 original. This daunting task goes to director Mike Flanagan, who’s become quite a notable horror director these past few years thanks to his work on projects like 2017’s Gerald’s Game (another Stephen King adaptation) and his critically acclaimed TV series adaptation of author Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. And sure enough, Flanagan manages to land another big hit with Doctor Sleep, which aptly succeeds at being a natural follow-up to one of the most iconic horror films ever made without ever feeling like a direct carbon copy of what Stanley Kubrick managed to accomplish.

It has been nearly four decades since young Danny Torrance and his mother Wendy (Alex Essoe) managed to escape the devastation at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado caused by Danny’s father/Wendy’s husband Jack. Since then, Dan (Ewan McGregor) has struggled to cope with all the trauma that he endured from that incident to the point where he’s even fallen victim to the same drinking habits that his father had. In doing so, he’s also attempted to repress the psychic abilities that he’s had since he was a kid, which the late Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly), who also had these abilities, referred to as ‘The Shining’. Dan eventually ends up in the town of Frazier, New Hampshire, where he manages to secure a job as a hospice worker that allows him to use his powers for good. He also ends up meeting a young girl from Anniston, New Hampshire named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), who’s also revealed to have the Shining. However, in the process, Abra and Dan end up attracting the attention of a cult known as the True Knot, led by the mysterious Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), who feed on the essences of young children who have the Shining to maintain their youthful appearances. And through their initial interactions, Rose realizes that Abra might just be the most powerful psychic child that the True Knot has come across in quite some time. Thus, despite his reluctance to get involved in this situation, Dan teams up with Abra to protect her from the True Knot, and in the process, is even forced to finally start confronting the dark past that has haunted him his entire life.

Now, despite what I said earlier about how the film attempts to combine elements from both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick’s versions of The Shining, it’s clear from the get-go that this adaptation of Doctor Sleep mainly takes inspiration from the latter. While this isn’t a case where the film just relies solely on Kubrick’s film at the expense of telling its own story, the imagery that Flanagan uses to address Dan Torrance’s past always comes from the 1980 film right down to some very impeccable recreations of its key moments. And while Flanagan doesn’t outright mirror Kubrick’s classic shooting style of long takes and wide shots, he and his long-time cinematographer Michael Fimognari do mimic that method in a few select sequences. In other words, not only does Doctor Sleep benefit from having some phenomenal cinematography, it also legitimately feels like the kind of follow-up that Kubrick would have done if he’d made this. The only major instance where the film’s connections to Kubrick’s Shining start to get a little problematic is its finale which, without spoiling anything, basically ends up becoming one big Shining callback after another. At the same time, though, the ending also allows for some nods to King’s version of The Shining, resulting in a unique hybrid of an adaptation that, at the end of the day, does end up honoring both incarnations of its predecessor in a respectful manner. Plus, even though the film boasts a hefty run-time that nearly rivals It: Chapter Two, its story is always a compelling one even with the slow-burn narrative that it consistently maintains.

Like many Stephen King works, Doctor Sleep is also very much a character-driven story, and in this instance, it all begins (and, in many cases, ends) with Dan Torrance. Stephen King has said that one of the main reasons why he wrote Doctor Sleep was because he was curious about what young Danny from The Shining would be like as an adult. As it turns out, Dan ends up becoming quite the tragic but overall sympathetic figure who’s just trying to move on from his traumatic past, and Ewan McGregor does a phenomenal job conveying all the emotional turmoil that Dan has been dealing with since his time at the Overlook Hotel. Newcomer Kyliegh Curry shows the same brilliant sense of commitment to her role as Abra, who could technically be described as this film’s equivalent of young Danny from The Shining given that both are precocious kids thanks to their Shining abilities. However, Curry does manage to differentiate herself from Danny Lloyd’s performance as Danny in Kubrick’s film in some very distinct ways, whether it’s due to her notably spunkier personality or something as simple as the fact that she’s a teenager whereas Danny was only five during the events of The Shining. Rebecca Ferguson, meanwhile, is terrific as the film’s main antagonist Rose the Hat, who brilliantly blurs the line between being manipulatively charismatic and chillingly menacing. This, in turn, helps to make her cult, the True Knot, a genuinely imposing threat right from the very beginning. And then, to close it all off, there’s some solid supporting turns from the likes of Cliff Curtis as Billy, a friendly Frazier local who ends up tagging along with Dan and Abra on their journey, and Carl Lumbly, who manages to be quite the spot-on successor to the late Scatman Crothers as Dick Hallorann.

As embarrassing as it might be for me to admit, it wasn’t until recently (e.g. the day before I went to go see this film) when I finally watched The Shining for the first time. As such, my overall thoughts on the film ultimately ended up falling in line with my thoughts towards John Carpenter’s Halloween. In other words, despite having seen it at a point where I’ve already witnessed plenty of films and TV shows that were either heavily inspired by it or have satirized it in some form, I could still appreciate all the masterful filmmaking that went into it. And even though we’re far removed from the time of Stanley Kubrick at this point, Doctor Sleep manages to be a worthy follow-up to the seminal classic that precedes it. Through this film, director Mike Flanagan crafts a highly compelling and character-driven supernatural thriller that thoroughly respects its predecessor while still being able to do its own thing. And while the film’s reliance on the imagery of Kubrick’s film does mean that this technically isn’t a note-for-note 100% faithful adaptation of its source material, its story and character beats end up being more in line with Stephen King’s original vision for The Shining. In other words, the best way to describe this adaptation of Doctor Sleep is that it’s a film that is done in the style of Stanley Kubrick but with Stephen King’s narrative sensibilities. Because of this, the film manages to do what some may have considered utterly impossible by bridging many of the narrative divergences that were caused by what is still quite possibly the most radically different interpretation of a Stephen King story. And while it clearly must’ve been an incredibly daunting task to try and do a follow-up to one of the most iconic horror films of all-time, Mike Flanagan handles all this immense pressure with ease and continues to prove why he’s one of the most revered horror directors as of late.

Rating: 4.5/5