Doctor Sleep

With Doctor Sleep, writer-director Mike Flanagan (Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House) has seemingly done the impossible by combining elements of two vastly different creative minds.  He not only has made an adaptation of Stephen King's 2013 novel, which served as a sequel to The Shining, but he has also merged it with Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film adaptation of the earlier story.  King was famously outspoken in his opposition to what Kubrick had done with his version of The Shining, and so combining both visions into one film must have been a daunting task.

What Flanagan does is make a direct sequel to Kubrick's film, all the while respecting King's vision to his sequel novel.  He merges elements of both, while also adding his own unique vision when necessary.  This is not, for the most part, one huge nostalgia trip, bending over backwards to please the fans like last weekend's Terminator: Dark Fate.  There are callbacks to the earlier movie, sure, but Flanagan is not afraid to strike out in his own direction, and does so regularly.  He is not a slave to what has come before.  In another smart move, when he needs to flashback to events in Kubrick's film, he recreates the scenes.  He uses new actors, rather than using unconvincing CG to make it look like younger versions of Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall are performing in his sets, which are recreations of the originals.  If he had gone this route, it would have been distracting, so I support his decision to just recast the classic roles when his film calls for it.

This new film picks up in 1980, only a few months after young clairvoyant boy Danny Torrance (Roger Dale Floyd) and his mother Wendy (Alex Essoe) escaped from the Overlook Hotel with their lives.  They are now living in Florida, however Danny's "Shining" is as strong as ever, and he is still being haunted by the ghosts who tormented him in the previous film.  Fortunately, the ghost of the kindly caretaker Dick Halloran (an effective Carl Lumbly) is also still around, and he helps teach Danny how to not only confront the evil spirits, but also lock them away.  These opening moments effectively recreate the tone of the earlier movie, without feeling the need to be slavishly faithful.  It feels like a direct continuation of the original, with Flanagan adding some new twisted ideas into the mix.

Eventually we skip ahead to the boy as an adult, now going as Dan, and played by Ewen McGregor.  When we first meet him, he seems to be following in his father's footsteps of alcohol abuse, as well as drugs and waking up with women he doesn't know in his bed.  Fortunately, his path soon crosses with a man named Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), who not only helps Dan get his life together and seek help, but also gives him a place to live in the attic of his home.  Before long, Dan has taken up a job at an old folk's home, and he seems to be on his way to be free from the demons that have long haunted him.  But then, he starts receiving chalkboard messages from a young girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), who also possesses the Shining as well, only even more powerful.  Her power and energy have attracted the attention of a vampiric cult who live off the energy and the life essence of gifted children who possess clairvoyant abilities like Abra.  Led by the deceptively charming Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), the cult realizes the power that this girl holds, and want to feast upon it. 

The evil cult at the center of Doctor Sleep are largely kept a mystery.  They used to be human.  We know this because early in the film, we see how they capture a teenage girl with the power to control minds (Emily Alyn Lind), and make her one of them.  They can live for centuries, but they need to feed upon the "steam" or life essence of the clairvoyant in order to survive.  Rose serves as their leader, and uses her own powers to seek out children all over the world who might be able to sustain her and her followers.  However, there are fewer of these children out their in the world, and the cult's numbers are starting to dwindle.  So, when they discover young Abra, Rose knows that she must have her.  Dan naturally ends up getting involved, and must fall back upon the power that he holds within himself that he has long tried to suppress. 

This is not an overly gory film, but it does have some horrifying moments, such as when we witness the evil cult kidnap a young boy from the side of a road and later feed upon his "steam".  What the film does is create a suitably tense atmosphere where the world is full of hungry people who want to feed upon those who are special enough to possess psychic powers.  The villains in this movie don't want to exploit or draw out their powers like you would expect, but to consume them and then throw them away.  It's this callous nature that makes the villains in this film so detestable, much more so than if they simply had yet another plan for world domination.  One of the effective angles Flanagan uses is that he portrays the villains as regular people.  Were it not for their evil appetites, they would just be a regular band of drifters who have created a sort of make-shift family.  Ferguson, in particular, manages to be both charismatic and hateful at the same time in her portrayal as their leader, and it creates one of the stronger villain portrayals on the screen in a while.

A lot of the film's success is actually due to the performances which create the right atmosphere of dread and quiet tension.  McGregor is appropriately quiet and reserved as a man who just wants to move on from his past, and draw as little attention to himself as possible.  His power seeps out now and then (he tells an almost stranger where he can find his missing watch), but for the most part, Dan just wants to live quietly and normally.  When he is drawn into Abra's plight and realizes the power she holds, they create a genuine bond as he becomes her friend and protector.  This is also just a superbly put together film, as well.  Flanagan not only wrote and directed the film, but also edited it, and he knows how to keep the story moving almost constantly during the film's two and a half hour run time.  There are no slow spots here, or moments that I felt like the film was dragging or stalling for time.  All the emotions are earned, and the ultimate climax which is set in the only location this film could wrap up in is powerful.

After the recent disappointing King adaptations we got this year with the Pet Sematary remake and It: Chapter Two, Doctor Sleep is a reminder of the writer's power with storytelling.  It also continues to prove that Mike Flanagan is probably the most consistently reliable mainstream horror filmmaker that we have working today.  He has gone beyond making a sequel or a tribute to a beloved film, and has instead made his own strong piece of work that stands on its own. 

0 comments