It's best to forget about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and just try to appreciate Doctor Sleep as an entertaining but average horror film.
Doctor Sleep (2019), directed by Mike Flanagan from his own script; based on the Stephen King novel of the same title; starring Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Carl Lumbly, Bruce Greenwood, and Cliff Curtis.
Caution: Spoilers Ahead
This film is a sequel to both the legendary 1980 Stanley Kubrick onscreen interpretation of the Stephen King novel, The Shining, as well as the 1977 novel itself. Director-writer Mike Flanagan labored mightily to reconcile the two conflicting versions of the same story, and he mostly succeeds. Unfortunately, he spends so much time and effort on the reconciliation that he forgets to scare us -- or at least to seriously creep us out.
It's an entertaining yarn that tells a cohesive story, but there is very little that’s scary or even creepy about Doctor Sleep. There is one horrific scene featuring the torture-murder of a child that’s very disturbing, and a bloody, somewhat thrilling shoot-out between the good guys and the bad guys. That’s about it for the thrills and chills in Doctor Sleep — in a movie that’s two-and-a-half hours long! What’s worse, by the time the third act rolls around, the film descends into parody, sentiment, and, at least in one scene, outright silliness.
This is not to say that there are no good things about Doctor Sleep. The film starts creepily enough, with a prologue depicting the abduction of a sweet little girl by the main villainess, played by Rebecca Ferguson (The Girl on the Train, Men in Black: International). I hated the villainess, named Rose the Hat, on sight. Not just because she’s an evil, child-torturing, soul-stealing vampire, but because she reminds me of every single self-centered, Earth Mother hippie chick I've known who thinks the sun shoots rainbows out of her butt because she’s so “enlightened” and “special.” (I met several of the type at art school.) Basically, she’s an evil version of Marianne Williamson. Ferguson does a brilliant job as Rose, making her the most memorable -- and hate-able -- Stephen King villain since Tim Curry’s Pennywise.
From the abduction of the little girl (played by Violet McGraw, who was adorable as little Nell in Flanagan’s hit Netflix miniseries of The Haunting of Hill House), the story moves to the early 80s, where Danny and Wendy Torrance are living in Florida and trying to forget the sad events of The Overlook Hotel.
The actors who play Danny and Wendy are tasked with a double challenge, as they have to play Danny Lloyd and Shelley Duvall in addition to playing their characters. Alex Essoe, who plays Wendy-Shelley, mostly succeeds in convincing us that she’s Kubrick’s Wendy a few years later. Roger Dale Floyd, who plays Danny-Danny, doesn’t succeed. He neither looks nor acts like little Danny Lloyd. Later on in the film, there’s a role for Henry Thomas (another Hill House alum) to play Jack-Jack, and he’s ridiculous.
The ghost of the woman in Room 237 has followed Danny to Florida, so he consults with Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly), his “shining” mentor from The Overlook. Note: Kubrick’s Hallorann died, but King’s Hallorann lived, so Flanagan has no choice but to bring Hallorann back as a ghost. It works, but it completely negates the horror of Hallorann’s brutal execution in the Kubrick film; here, he doesn’t even seem all that upset that he’s dead. Lumbly does very well at playing Hallorann, although he's not going to make anyone forget the beloved Scatman Crothers and his endearing, bow-legged walk.
Hallorann teaches Danny some mind tricks for keeping ghosts away, and the little boy mostly succeeds. But Dan still grows up to be a shiftless alcoholic loser, just like dear old Dad. McGregor does fantastically well at portraying the adult Dan Torrance and his life of misery and failure. At times, he brings in subtle mannerisms and vocal nuances that recall Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Jack Torrance, without descending into parody. It’s amazing.
Danny — now Dan — winds up in a small town in New Hampshire, where he meets Billy Freeman, a saintly and selfless Alcoholics Anonymous veteran (played by Maori actor Cliff Curtis). Billy helps him find a job and AA, and Dan sobers up and gets right with the world. (An honorary Magic Negro, the character of Billy is so saintly that I knew he would eventually turn up as crow feed...and...guess what?)
Dan also makes anonymous psychic friends with a child named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), who possesses a powerful “shine.” He communicates with Abra through a blackboard wall in his rented room, although he doesn’t know her name or where she lives. This is a big hole in the plot, as he talks with Abra through the blackboard for eight years and never learns her name or any other identifying information.
Eventually they do get together, as Abra is now thirteen and her “shine” leads her to Dan’s small town in New Hampshire. That’s where Rose the Hat and her band of followers come in. They are "shiners" who torture and murder other people who “shine” to collect their essence for eating, which they call "steam". They are running out of "steamy" people to eat and are desperate to grab Abra and use her for their special all-you-can-eat buffet.
Dan and Abra, assisted by Billy, fight back against Rose and her steam-craving minions. Their battle eventually leads to The Overlook Hotel, which has been boarded-up and moldering away for almost forty years. This is where the movie starts to fall apart; Dan’s reasons for taking Abra to The Overlook are absurd. He theorizes that the evil forces at The Overlook will kill Rose because they want her "shine". It’s a ridiculous plan and even young Abra scrunches up her face and makes a WTF expression. But back to The Overlook they go, and evil Rose follows them. Her demise is jaw-droppingly silly. (Somewhere on The Great Soundstage in the Sky, Stanley is shaking his head.)
It’s nice to see all the familiar sets and scenes of The Overlook recreated, except that they’re moldy and dilapidated. The familiar cast of ghouls is trotted out as well: Grady, the twins, Lloyd the Bartender, Horace Derwent, etc. But it starts to feel parodical as they pop up one after the other. ( Dan meets Lloyd the Bartender in a recreation of the famous bar scene in The Shining, except that Lloyd now looks like Jack Torrance-Jack Nicholson. Well, he looks like Henry Thomas in a bad wig trying to look like Jack Torrance-Jack Nicholson.)
After dispatching Rose, the evil spirit of The Overlook takes over Dan and turns him into Jack Torrance 2.0., an event that is far too abrupt in pacing. After all, it took The Overlook months to possess Jack and about three minutes to possess his son -- what's up with that?
If you’ve read the novel version of The Shining, you know how The Overlook eventually ends up; whole passages and lines of dialogue are directly taken from the ending of that novel for this film. Except that Dan makes an inexplicable, pointless sacrifice and goes down with the ship after defeating the hotel. There should have been a compelling reason, but there’s none.
Sidenote: It seems silly, but there's one other thing that bothers me about Doctor Sleep, and that's the house that the "typical, upper-middle-class" Stone family lives in. The house is lavish, with a kitchen that's larger than my first apartment. This follows a trend of the last twenty years where Hollywood makes it look like most "typical" Americans live much better than they really do. The Jordan Peele movie, Us, from last summer, fell into the same trap: the family in that film, too, were supposed to be upper-middle class, but their Santa Cruz, California beach house would have been worth between $3 and $4 million at current Northern California real estate prices. That's not "upper-middle-class", that's rich.
The average American family has an income of $50,000 per year. The way that Hollywood portrays the lifestyles of "typical Americans" shows how out of touch it is with the vast population of this country. Imagine being a real "typical American" and looking at the Stone family's house, wondering why you don't live in something that looks like that? This kind of disconnect just feeds the resentment and division that's currently endemic in this country. Hollywood, please give us more realistic "typical American" houses -- thank you!
Rant over, and summation following, I kind of see Doctor Sleep -- when compared to Kubrick’s original -- as a barometer of the cultural decay of the US as a nation. Whereas The Shining was a film for a nation of adults (self-doubting, but still adults), Doctor Sleep is a film for a nation of blubbering five-year-olds in adult skins, who know that the bogeyman will eventually be sent away by the time that the final credits roll. At the end, there is no “Jack-frozen-in-the-snow-moment” for us to debate and ponder; only pure sentimentality. This film is worth a watch, but it's no competition for Stanley's masterpiece. It's best to just forget about The Shining and try to enjoy for Doctor Sleep for its own merits.
