Doctor Sleep (2019)
REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER
DOCTOR SLEEP is a curate's egg of a film. Wonderful in places, odd in others, with one or two mis-steps that almost derail it but ultimately do not because it carries through its promise to tell the story of Danny Torrance all-grown-up.
I need to declare that I am ambivalent about THE SHINING; I don't particularly like it but I do find it compelling, and I think about it a lot. I don't like the way Kubrick used horror clichés to populate his rooms and corridors, as though the great director had just discovered the genre and wanted to play with its visual tropes, and I find it wrong that its narrative went with the boorish brute of an alcoholic, Jack Torrance, rather than the boy on whom the tale was predicated. As a portrayal of an abusive alcoholic man with writer's block, it was in a world of its own. But as a horror film about a boy with a special ability, it neglected to do anything of value with that ability, leaving Danny and Scatman Crothers' Halloran out in the cold. The two elements did not meet in a satisfying way, and to posit that Jack was "always here" at the end, in that photograph, felt cheap and undermined the need of Danny's shining to be in the story.
* MILD SPOILERS* ahead.
Stephen King did not like the Kubrick film either. He waited thirty five years before writing a sequel novel to put things right. He went with Danny, showing him as an adult, battling monsters and alcoholism, like his father, and earning himself the titular nickname because of his shining empathy with dying patients - at the moment of death - in the hospice where he finds work.
Mike Flanagan's DOCTOR SLEEP movie attempts to bring the two things together. One suspects the writer/director loves both the King and the Kubrick, and felt compelled to unite them like a hurt child wanting to bring his divorced parents back together.
King was willing to listen to Flanagan because the film-maker did such a good job with the author's GERALD'S GAME for Netflix, and a groundbreaking and scary-as-hell ten part adaptation of Shirley Jackson's seminal THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.
Ewan McGregor makes a good, compassionate and weary Danny Torrance (ignore the accent fluctuations); Rebecca Ferguson makes a terrific opponent in Rose The Hat, the leader of a group called the True Knot. Her appearance in the film's opening, a homage to the Maria by the river scene in Universal's 1931 FRANKENSTEIN, tells us she is the monster.
The True Knot is where the film comes to life. They are like the vamps in Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK, travelling the US in camper vans, baiting and taking their victims. Except in DOCTOR SLEEP, the victims are children who shine. And this is where the film carries a rare and horrifying charge. The scene in which a boy is kidnapped and murdered in order for the True Knot to feed on him is genuinely disturbing. It's not a swift clean death for pain makes the "steam" he releases as he expires (think of it as a lifeforce or the soul escaping the body) more powerful, especially steam from those who shine, and the True Knot feeds on this steam. It's in this killing moment, or the scene where Rose The Hat travels through dream to the house of a new child with the shining to do battle with her, that the film becomes remarkable, adding something to the genre.
The new child with the power - named Abra - is played by young actress Kyleigh Curran and she is a revelation. She gives a strong assured performance, easily matching McGregor and Ferguson when on-screen with them. She brings such a sense of courage and bite to the role that when she faces off against Rose The Hat and her band of steam-thieves, we feel she might win.
Watch out, too, for Emily Alyn Lind's remarkable performance as Snakebite Andi. She deserves a film of her own.
Where DOCTOR SLEEP makes its mis-steps is when it goes back to the Overlook Hotel for its third act. The Overlook itself feels familiar, having become so iconic (that carpet, those elevator doors, the maze, its depiction in movies such as READY PLAYER ONE) that it no longer holds any surprises, other than in the fidelity of its re-creation. However, the main mistake is in having an actor playing Jack Torrance. Essentially, playing Jack Nicholson. The film gets away with actors playing Wendy and young Danny, but not Jack. I wanted to redo these parts with CG to restore the 1980 on-screen Nicholson, (something I would normally abhor) and then bring in an actor to recreate the voice; it would have been more effective.
That said, and leaving aside the Overlook and the painful Jack, the ending works finally and makes the film feel satisfying as a whole because it completes the stories for both Danny and Abra; the film delivers on its promise.