Doctor Sleep

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Director Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “The Shining” has been unfairly maligned over the years. When the movie was released almost forty years ago, it received seriously mixed reviews from many critics who felt it had strayed too far from horror movie conventions and had eviscerated the original novel of much of its power.

One of the critics that was most vocal about his dissatisfaction with the movie was King himself. Notoriously unhappy with the movie translation that Kubrick eventually brought to the screen, King has been quoted as succinctly saying, “I hated it.” Of course considering Kubrick took such great liberties with King’s source material, it isn’t surprising the author felt like his “baby” had been taken away from him and turned into something unrecognizable.

However, that’s exactly what makes Kubrick’s “The Shining” a masterpiece of filmmaking. The way it purposefully deviates from horror conventions creates something wholly original, unpredictable, and truly unsettling in the end.

Which presented filmmaker Mike Flanagan with a creative dilemma. When King wrote a sequel to “The Shining” called “Doctor Sleep” in 2013, it’s safe to say Hollywood was already drooling over the movie rights, considering King’s track record and “The Shining”s reputation as both a classic novel and movie. Director Flanagan was entrusted with adapting this material to the big screen, and justifiably so, considering his highly successful movie adaptation of King’s 1992 novel “Gerald’s Game” two years ago.

Flanagan soon found himself deeply immersed in the King/Kubrick schism. On the one hand, King himself had written the novel “Doctor Sleep”, and was responsible for the material itself that the movie would be based on, with legions of supporters behind him. At the same time, Flanagan was keenly aware of how much the reputation of Kubrick’s movie adaptation had risen over the years, with hordes of its own fans supporting it as well.

It’s deep within that creative chasm that this movie adaptation of “Doctor Sleep” now resides. In it, Flanagan attempts to appease fans of King’s pulpy storytelling style while pleasing fans of Kubrick’s version’s powerful mounting sense of imminent dread and deep-seated horror at the same time.

The result ends up falling somewhere in the middle. Much of the movie plays out like a supernatural action movie, and the plot heavy atmosphere of these portions of the film feel very much like the work of King’s narrative hand. The movie introduces some interesting new ideas, with Danny (Ewan McGregor) now grown, traumatized by his childhood experiences, and facing his father’s tendency for alcohol issues to deal with the pain. His main nemeses are a seemingly immortal tribe of ghouls that feed on children with “shining” abilities who are a welcome addition to this continuing story, led by a ferociously intense performance by Rebecca Ferguson as the group’s charismatic leader Rose the Hat.

At the same time, and especially once the film’s setting eventually shifts back to the infamous Overlook Hotel, a familiar sense of impending doom seizes the movie, even if the nostalgia factor is laid on a little thick. Musical cues immediately remind us that we’re watching a horror movie, and Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s familiar dissonant strains greatly add to the sense of unease. Flanagan should also get credit for following Kubrick’s lead and refusing to indulge in horror movie cliches like jump scares and an overt use of gore, instead relying on atmosphere and suspense.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, director Flanagan isn’t quite able to recreate the creepy atmosphere Kubrick so masterfully employed in the original movie. For example, the deliberate and measured pace with which actors delivered their lines in “The Shining” that succeeded in creating a chilling sense of foreboding is noticeably absent here, denying the sequel the tense atmosphere that the original movie managed to suggest in every line of dialogue.

Instead, director Mike Flanagan keeps the pace moving at such a clip in “Doctor Sleep” that some scenes aren’t always given enough space to breathe, and attempts to create an effectively creepy atmosphere tend to evaporate prematurely. Much of this can be probably be attributed to the attempt to adapt a 531-page novel into a movie with a reasonable running time. But it’s here that Flanagan fails to heed “The Shining”s example. Kubrick managed to use King’s source novel as a mere blueprint and then crafted a movie that was very much his own. Flanagan, instead, tries to bridge the gap between King and Kubrick, without bringing enough of an original voice to the project.

That’s not to say “Doctor Sleep” is an unsatisfying experience, far from it. Any fan of Kubrick’s movie version of “The Shining” will find much to savor here, as the movie references and recreates much of the filmmaker’s impressive accomplishment here with rewarding results. Stephen King fans should be similarly happy with the compelling story here as well. It’s a real treat to see how these characters’ lives unfolded in the aftermath of the original novel’s events, while creating an entirely new, original plot with which to re-engage an adult Danny Torrance. However, if the movie had found a more consistent tone in which to marry these different elements, we could easily have had another modern classic on our hands. Instead, we merely have a better than average addition to the Stephen King movie canon.

Rated R.