A Strong Stephen King Adaptation
Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is a man struggling to escape his past. He sees ghosts that remind him of a troubled childhood defined by an abusive father; like his father, Dan turns to alcohol to block out his problems, and it’s not until someone reaches out to help him that he starts to settle his life and find a new, meaningful path in sobriety. Dan’s life is relatively serene until he comes into contact with a young girl with the same ability, a power he calls the Shining.
2013 saw the release of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, the sequel to his earlier horror novel The Shining, which was famously adapted by Stanley Kubrick into a horror classic that deviated from King’s novel in ways that left the author disgruntled. Writer/director Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of the King sequel aims to reconcile the two, and mostly succeeds.
Following Dan Torrance as he helps Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), uncover the evil doings of Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), a cult leader who feeds on the shine of others. Compared to The Shining’s plot of a young boy dealing with an abusive, alcoholic father in a haunted hotel, Doctor Sleep’s narrative feels refreshingly different. Flanagan uses various shots and music to evoke Kubrick’s film without outright copying it, and that lends this movie a sense of connective tissue that helps root Dan in the same world despite new settings and fresh faces.
The film very deliberately takes its time, telling Dan’s story before diving back into the world of The Shining and psychological horror. The first 30 minutes or so really are just a chronicle of a troubled man trying to get his life together, all of which leads up to a touching moment at an AA meeting in which Dan evokes the memory of his father.
Once Flanagan has done his due diligence to let McGregor make Dan his own, Abra is fully introduced, and we get a greater sense of Rose’s plans. All of the actors do fine work here—Curran is a particularly great find—though it’s Ferguson’s devilish Rose who steals every scene she’s in. Every time she finds a new prey, excitedly saying, “Well, hi there,” it’s like she’s just found the meaning of life. She’s as mesmerized by finding someone who really shines as Ferguson is mesmerizing for the audience.
The only place the film stumbles is when it directly revisits Kubrick’s film and the Overlook Hotel. Flanagan is fairly restrained when the story’s action shifts to the shuttered resort, but a handful of moments, such as the famous shot of blood gushing out of opening elevator doors, are pointless beyond fan service. It’s one thing to revisit the famous hedge maze, or have Dan fending off a villain with a fire axe, but not everything that is old must be new again, just as not everything mysterious in the original story needs an explanation or follow up. Doctor Sleep mercifully does not go so far as to examine every how and why of how the evil forces at the Overlook operate, but it comes very close to crossing that line. It robs the film’s final act of some power, but it may also play better on a second viewing, or for those who haven’t revisited the original film so recently.
Regardless of any Kubrick and King baggage you’re bringing to the theater, there’s no denying that Doctor Sleep is a well crafted, very effective supernatural thriller. It has deep respect for what came before, but not so much as to drain all invention and dramatic power from its fresher elements. I haven’t read King’s novel, but I imagine the best parts of this story come from him, and that had this just been a stand-alone film sequel to The Shining, we wouldn’t have gotten something so rich with character. Mike Flanagan has retained that integrity, balancing a popular property with something new.