Doctor Sleep-Half King, Half Kubrick
Given an impossible, close to thankless task, Mike Flannigan crafts an impressive follow up to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining." The result is a picture that honors the material in King's sequel to "The Shining" while retaining the nostalgia of the original. "Doctor Sleep" is flawed at times, even dull, but it's ultimately a different film that contains some impressive deep meaning to its characters that was perhaps lacking in the original. If it weren’t for some additional characters this film could have scored higher in my book. Staying true to the novel there are elements that are too large to avoid unless Mike Flannigan wanted to pull a fast one on King making a totally faithless adaptation which probably wouldn’t go well with his legal team.
Danny Torrence (Ewan McGregor) is now a grown man whose incapable of wrestling his demons. Desperately managing to stop hearing the cries from the ghosts that haunt him, Danny finds solace in a bottle until he finally decides to clean up with the help of his life saving newfound friend Billy. (Cliff Curtis) Working in a hospice with his extraordinary gift to shine, Danny can hear the dead, assisting the patients in their final moments before their passing, where he helps them find solace amongst tremendous fear. Thus the title of the film. Where the picture (much like the book) finds itself faltering is in the discovery of the True Knot, a group of semi vampires who look like groupies for an 80s band that go around and suck the life force (also known as steam) out of the victims they kill. "Feed well, live long," or something like that is their motto. Like Danny, they also shine. It's not long before their leader Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), discovers a little girl who can shine like them whose power is unmatched. Upon Rose's discovery of little Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), Abra finds Danny to assist her against the evil cult. Then everyone gets in a psychic shining battle within the abandoned confines of the overlook hotel.
If the second half of that plot description sounds a bit corny, well, that's Stephen King for you. For as many of the human elements he gets right, his metaphysical aspects don't perform as well on screen. Mike Flannigan tries his best to make these components work to honor King's writing, yet seeing actors float around the air amidst some scenes that look like a CGI mess doesn't quite get my spine-tingling as it should. Unfortunately, most of the story is about stoping The True Knot, which can be cumbersome no thanks to Abra Stone, who is not that interesting of a character for the audience to latch onto. Abra can shine like Danny did when he was her age, but Danny was haunted by his gift, crippled from childhood, not knowing how to handle seeing traumatic imagery daily. For Abra, it's not the least bit bothersome because, well, I honestly don't know. Halfway through the movie, something terrible is happening that Arba can see in her mind. Abra communicates this horrific event to Danny telekinetically then is magically better the next morning after telepathically witnessing an event that would scar someone for life. Abra is a Mary Sue in almost every sense of the word. Nothing gets to her; she's always outsmarting her nemesis, and she hardly has any enormous obstacles to hurdle over. I initially thought Kyleigh Curran's performance was to blame, but really, it was just her lack of character that takes the film to a near screeching halt.
The saving grace of "Doctor Sleep" is its examination of alcoholism. The thing Stephen King hated that Stanley Kubrick did with his incredibly loose adaptation of the book was making every character a one-dimensional set-piece for a story that was more occupied in its visuals and interpretive meaning. As an ex-alcoholic who ironically bases his website, podcast, and YouTube show in a bar, I could full-heartedly relate to Danny's struggles. You use the bottle to stop the voices. Whether it be regret, anger, fear, anxiety, whatever it is, you drink to shut it up. If you don't drink, those voices are like ghosts that can lead to even more madness. Recovering from his battles of addiction, King wrote "The Shining." Then Kubrick turned a sympathetic father figure who's own demons ultimately leads into insanity, into a raging jerk from frame one. "Doctor Sleep" the movie looks at a man who overcomes his addiction, takes on the voices he has head-on, and tries to reconcile with his past monsters. Flannigan doesn't just ape what the original Kubrick film does, nor does he create an entirely conventional sequel. He creates something of his own that has something to say about the overarching themes that were in both of Stephen King's books.
The moments where the film shines the most is when it tells its own tale away from the callbacks to the first film. Mike Flannigan is just barely able to balance pleasing fans of the classic and Stephen King readers alike in a movie that's separate from the original. To ask one to top "The Shining" would be assinine. Stanley Kubrick was one of the most exceptional living directors to have been on this earth. His work can't be remade, compared, or topped. To view "Doctor Sleep" in a competitive manner next to "The Shining" is a waste of time. All you can do is your own thing. "Doctor Sleep" is as good of a balancing act that one can handle, which is quite commendable and perhaps one of the better adaptations of Stephen King's horror work to ever come out. Which isn't saying much, but it's something.
*** out ****
