Doctor Sleep: A Pleasing Convergence
Doctor Sleep could’ve been a clusterfuck. Instead, it’s a pleasing convergence.
The timeline for The Shining universe is as follows: Stephen King’s novel was published in 1977. Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation was released in 1980. Notoriously critical of Kubrick’s take, King adapted the novel as a TV miniseries (directed by Mick Garris) in 1997. In 2013, King’s belated sequel, Doctor Sleep, was published. And now, in 2019, we have the film adaptation of that.
To address the hotel-sized elephant in the room: I don’t like Kubrick’s film. I’ve watched it many times through the years, but it never connects. I think King’s complaints about the adaptation are valid – Kubrick jettisons a lot of the thematic elements that lent the novel its most resonant moments. What remained was a stylish – yet overlong and distant – effort that kept the characters at arm’s-length. As a result, the dramatic impact just wasn’t there.
Though its CGI has aged less than gracefully, I much prefer the miniseries. In terms of performance, pace, and overall execution, it surpasses Kubrick’s film. Steven Weber’s gradual descent into madness is convincing and heartbreaking – a stark contrast to Jack Nicholson’s comical scenery-chewing. The miniseries also retains certain details that make the stakes feel much higher for the Torrance family, well before any ghosts show up.
Therein lies the paradox: despite King getting the adaptation he ostensibly wanted, the fact of the matter is this – Kubrick’s film is canon. For an overwhelming majority of people, it’s the definitive telling of The Shining, eclipsing even the source novel.
The Alchemy of Adaptation
To complicate things even further: I didn’t like Doctor Sleep (the novel). Catching up with Danny Torrance decades after the trauma and tragedy at the Overlook Hotel was a premise ripe with potential. Outside of a half-hearted opening, though, King’s novel lurched into a lackluster tale of psychic vampires. The twist? Danny joins forces with Abra Stone, a tween who shares his unique gift, to fight the menace.
But…I like Mike Flanagan, and have a great deal of respect for his efforts within the horror genre (Hush; Oculus; Ouija: Origin of Evil; and a bunch more). In a relatively short period, he’s established himself as a consistent and capable craftsman. His work is attuned to the emotional complexity of characters, an area where many current horrors fall short.
In yet another paradox, I actually liked the overt nods to Kubrick’s film in the Doctor Sleep trailers. I knew that, if any director could perform the alchemy of fusing that film with the spirit of King’s text, it was Flanagan.
Fully Fleshed-out Journey
Needless to say, Doctor Sleep doesn’t disappoint. It does so much, so well, and with such confidence, that I was swept up in its fully fleshed-out journey. Without giving too much away, it’s curious about the convergence of past, present, and future in a way King’s novel was not. It brings back familiar faces while seamlessly integrating new ones. It’s a sequel that surpasses Kubrick’s film, the Garris miniseries, and its source novels.
Which I guess is to say: Flanagan gets King more than King gets King at this point.
Things that felt obligatory in the novel are helped by the cinematic approach: a sequence involving the murder of a child by the psychic vampires (dubbed “The True Knot,” and led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) is incredibly unsettling, in part because it’s being psychically witnessed by Abra (Kyliegh Curran)…but also because it’s shot and cut like a gang rape (complete with sighs of pleasure from our soul-sucking antagonists).
There is a sense of indisputable wrongness and horror – not only in what we’re seeing, but the fact that a child is “seeing” it, as well. This distinguishes the True Knot as predators who’ve been seduced by the allure of preserving their longevity, regardless of the carnage left in their wake. And the opening scene – a callback to James Whale’s Frankenstein – has Rose using the ruse of magic to lull another young victim. It’s an idyllic daytime moment where innocence gives way to tragedy.
Reconciling the Irreconciable
Ewan McGregor makes for a fine grownup Dan Torrance, who wants to lock away the demons of his past, including a struggle with alcoholism. Flanagan offers an empathetic depiction of Dan’s journey to sobriety, but takes it even further: as King used the Overlook spirits as a metaphor for the overwhelming powers of addiction, Doctor Sleep attaches the theme of reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable. Ferguson and her Near Dark-styled convoy are presented at the other end of the spectrum – nomads who’ve succumbed to the primal enticement of their predatory natures, and have thereby accepted their status as anomalies within the mortal world.
In a several-minute scene that shows Flanagan’s shrewd understanding of The Shining, Dan ventures back to the boarded-up and abandoned Overlook. He finds himself seated at that timeless bar, a shot of whiskey testing his temperament. This is one of the quieter scenes in Doctor Sleep, but also one of the most impactful. As he shares a conversation with the bartender, Flanagan utilizes pin-drop pauses in dialog to underline Dan’s struggle. The scene begins with trepidation, but crescendos with a sense of reconciliation and resolve. From a dramatic standpoint, these several minutes of Doctor Sleep shook me more than anything in Kubrick’s film. Where Flanagan goes from there is immensely satisfying, fusing classical haunted-house tropes with modern CGI and a convergence of the psychological and emotional.
Like King’s novel, Doctor Sleep ventures too far into the metaphysical to ever become truly frightening in a supernatural sense. That’s fine, because the psychological elements tap into real-world insecurities and addictions with enough pathos to create a substantial amount of nerve-wracking moments. It’s a refreshingly even-handed depiction of outcasts who have, in their own unique ways, become detached from humanity, and the desire to either regain that humanity, or run far, far away from it.
4 bright shining stars out of 5
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Crash Analysis Support Team
Jonny Numb
Jonny Numb (aka Jonathan Weidler) never learned how to swim, but can float just fine. He co-hosts The Last Knock podcast with Billy Crash, and can be found in the social-media sewers of Twitter and Letterboxd @JonnyNumb.
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(Doctor Sleep movie poster from Warner Brothers.)