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
