Doctor Sleep Review

In recent years there has been a renaissance in adapting Stephen King’s work. 2019 seeing three cinematic adaptations of King novels. Doctor Sleep completed the year and it was a film that had to honour King’s work and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining.

After the events at the Overlook Hotel Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) has become an alcoholic like his father. He struggles with his trauma and his powers, but by 2019 he had become clean. Dan starts to communicate with Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a teenager who also has psychic power.

Roaming America is the True Knot cult, led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson.) They are a group of people with psychic powers and they have found a way to extend their lives: they eat psychic children. Rose becomes interested in Abra, leading to Dan becoming her protector.

The Shining has been regarded as one of the best horror films ever made, but King hated it because it made so many changes from the novel. Because of this King took more of an interest in film adaptations of his work and even wrote his own adaptation of The Shining for the 1997 miniseries. Doctor Sleep was stuck between pleasing King and his loyal fans and be a worthy sequel to the film version of The Shining.

Doctor Sleep had a similar dilemma to what faced 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Both were films were sequel to Kubrick classics, and both films aimed to interpret what happened next. But both sequels needed to rewrite/retcon certain parts of the original film so their narrative and themes to work.

When compared to The Shining, Doctor Sleep had more of a focus on the supernatural. The Shining was a psychological horror about isolation and a man snapping against his family. Doctor Sleep had more familiar King elements.

A popular trope in King’s work is people having powers of some sort, i.e. Carrie, Firestarter, The Stand, and The Green Mile. Doctor Sleep is an expansion of the idea that there are people having telepathic powers. In The Shining there were only two characters were known to have powers whilst Doctor Sleep showed there was a group of them formed a dark community. Ideas like a group of psychic resorting to cannibalism so they can stay young was a frightening idea.

King’s stories often have small-town settings, protagonists with personal demons, and memorable villains. Doctor Sleep has all these things. In 2011 Dan was shown to be an utter mess – he was drinking, snorting cocaine, and having a one-night stand with a random lady. His most loathsome act was nearly stealing from that woman. Even after Dan becomes sober the events of the Overlook Hotel still have a lasting effect and he needed to face them.

Rebecca Ferguson was the best part of the film. Ferguson as Rose had a distinctive look due to the hat she wore, and she had the charisma that made her believable as a leader that she could convince people to do horrific acts. Rose could be charming to targets so she could catch them off guard. However, Rose also had a temper, and she develops an obsession with Abra.

Mike Flanagan took on the writing and directing duties for Doctor Sleep. Even though he has a great reputation as a horror filmmaker, making a follow-up to a Kubrick film would be a daunting task for anyone. He was able to able to honour the original film whilst also adhering to King’s wishes. Flanagan and his team matched the look of the original film really closely and the casting of the returns characters (i.e. Carl Lumbly as Dick Hallorann and Henry Thomas as Jack) was perfect.

Some of the most inventive scenes in the film were when characters were able to astral project themselves and the imagery gets more imaginative. The scene when Rose and Abra read each other’s minds reminded me of the novel Dreamcatcher due to how the memories were portrayed. The psychic powers allowed for a lot of subdiffusion and misdirection. Flanagan could be a great fit for a film like Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, or X-Men film that focused on the mindscape. But by the third act Doctor Sleep felt too much like a re-enactment of The Shining.

Doctor Sleep was a long film: the theatrical cut was two and a half hours long and the director’s cut was three hours long. I only watched the theatrical cut but even that version had a long setup. It takes 45 minutes before the main story actually starts. This made Doctor Sleep a bit of a drag as it showed Dan and his mum in Florida, Dan at lowest, showing Abra when she was six, and Rose recruiting a new member to the cult. A lot of the information shown in this extended prologue was mentioned later in the film, so it could have been reduced whilst still keeping the intended atmosphere.

Doctor Sleep was an admirable attempt to be a sequel to a film that really didn’t need a follow-up. Flanagan showed his ability talent by juggling all the balls he was given and was able to respect Kubrick and King, for the most part.