C+Directed by Mike Flanagan Starring Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, and Kyliegh Curran Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Horror maestro Mike Flanagan finds himself caught between two cultural titans in Doctor Sleep. Stephen King wrote the book as a sequel to The Shining, the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of which King famously hated. Flanagan uses the book material and the movie aesthetic to bridge the gap between the two, making a film with plenty of King’s habits while paying homage to Kubrick. The latter works because Kubrick was a singular genius and even the slightest of visual nods to his films give considerable oomph. The former works… less well. The second slavish recreation of The Shining in as many years after Ready Player One, Doctor Sleep provides an imperfect follow-up that doesn’t sell its necessity as a sequel, though it has plenty of its own joys and thrills.
The film starts shortly after the events at the Overlook Hotel, as young Danny Torrance survived his father’s rampage but is still plagued by the hotel’s ghosts that drove his father insane. Friendly ghost Dick Halloran helps Danny suppress the malevolent ghosts’ influence, but as he ages into adulthood, Dan’s (Ewan McGregor) demons manifest as addiction and alcoholism. After a particularly rough night, he flees to one of those Stephen King New England towns and straightens himself out, finding work as an orderly in a hospice. A more peaceful life sharpens his gift, or his shine in the parlance of the film, and he is able to receive telepathic contact from fellow shiner Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran). Both will need allies against a hungry pack of ghouls prowling the region, murdering those who shine and consuming their energy. Led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), the group calls themselves the True Knot, and in a world with less and less shine in it, they desperately need the megawatt infusion that a powerful shiner like Abra can provide.
Doctor Sleep is more heavily indebted to King, and the film is alternately elevated and crippled by the prolific author’s variable qualities. The shine energy is referred to as steam by the True Knot, and in King fashion, terminology is used ad nauseum. Themes of addiction, abusive fathers, and the use of precocious children as protagonists are well-trod King ground, and nothing new is broached here. The film is far too long at 152 minutes, most bloated in its multistage climax and obligatory return to the Overlook. Conversely, King’s utility with a villain is on full display. Rose the Hat is a major highlight of Ferguson’s burgeoning career, an evil-and-loving-it killer of children who also manages to momentarily blind the viewer to her considerable sins with a deep love of her fellow cult members. Her costuming and the surprising physical aspect of the performance make her the Poochie of Doctor Sleep. Who cares about Dan Torrance when Rose the Hat is around?
A great villain allows Flanagan plenty of opportunity for satisfying set-pieces, either of Rose in action or on her back foot. The film’s first scene is a cumulative creeper of the True Knot finding a victim, and it’s not the only time they feast on a screaming tween. These ravenous atrocities create a huge amount of cathartic energy, and Flanagan detonates it in crowd-pleasing sequences. The True Knot’s numbers mean there’s lots of opportunity for visceral revenge, and Flanagan doesn’t cheap out on it. He doesn’t use Dan to do this, as he’s a guide figure instead of an instigator, but Abra. She isn’t a credible child, as she’s written as an adult in a child’s body, and while that breaks the character’s realism, it allows her to be a worthy adversary to the True Knot. Doctor Sleep plays with expectations by setting adults against children, and lets the shine function as an equalizer.
As the emotional center of the film, Dan is as uneven as Doctor Sleep itself. The film wants to suggest an equivalence between him and his father, such that a closed arc rules out that Dan will become Jack, but McGregor has none of Jack Nicholson’s erratic energy and that never feels like a possibility. Dan’s alcoholism is the kind that loses time, not the kind that ignites conflicts. On the other hand, the aforementioned length of the film is padded by long scenes of Dan at work in the hospice, all of which work well. The peace he’s able to find here, and the peace he’s able to give to dying patients as a man who can sense their deaths coming, provides ample stakes once the action kicks up. However, Flanagan makes the questionable choice to eschew some classic horror imagery to preserve the warmth of these scenes. Dan says he envisions flies coating people who are about to die, but it’s never shown onscreen. It’s not the wrong choice to go with drama over horror, but it’s a noticeable one.
Flanagan furthers his reputation as a rising horror director by taking this freighted project on in the first place and making something coherent out of it. Rose the Hat is too great a villain and the film that contains her has too many pleasures to be fully dismissed as an overly reverent paean to its source material. The flawed Doctor Sleep takes a long time to get through, but this is one Big-Wheel ride worth enduring. C+
Doctor Sleep is more heavily indebted to King, and the film is alternately elevated and crippled by the prolific author’s variable qualities. The shine energy is referred to as steam by the True Knot, and in King fashion, terminology is used ad nauseum. Themes of addiction, abusive fathers, and the use of precocious children as protagonists are well-trod King ground, and nothing new is broached here. The film is far too long at 152 minutes, most bloated in its multistage climax and obligatory return to the Overlook. Conversely, King’s utility with a villain is on full display. Rose the Hat is a major highlight of Ferguson’s burgeoning career, an evil-and-loving-it killer of children who also manages to momentarily blind the viewer to her considerable sins with a deep love of her fellow cult members. Her costuming and the surprising physical aspect of the performance make her the Poochie of Doctor Sleep. Who cares about Dan Torrance when Rose the Hat is around?
A great villain allows Flanagan plenty of opportunity for satisfying set-pieces, either of Rose in action or on her back foot. The film’s first scene is a cumulative creeper of the True Knot finding a victim, and it’s not the only time they feast on a screaming tween. These ravenous atrocities create a huge amount of cathartic energy, and Flanagan detonates it in crowd-pleasing sequences. The True Knot’s numbers mean there’s lots of opportunity for visceral revenge, and Flanagan doesn’t cheap out on it. He doesn’t use Dan to do this, as he’s a guide figure instead of an instigator, but Abra. She isn’t a credible child, as she’s written as an adult in a child’s body, and while that breaks the character’s realism, it allows her to be a worthy adversary to the True Knot. Doctor Sleep plays with expectations by setting adults against children, and lets the shine function as an equalizer.
As the emotional center of the film, Dan is as uneven as Doctor Sleep itself. The film wants to suggest an equivalence between him and his father, such that a closed arc rules out that Dan will become Jack, but McGregor has none of Jack Nicholson’s erratic energy and that never feels like a possibility. Dan’s alcoholism is the kind that loses time, not the kind that ignites conflicts. On the other hand, the aforementioned length of the film is padded by long scenes of Dan at work in the hospice, all of which work well. The peace he’s able to find here, and the peace he’s able to give to dying patients as a man who can sense their deaths coming, provides ample stakes once the action kicks up. However, Flanagan makes the questionable choice to eschew some classic horror imagery to preserve the warmth of these scenes. Dan says he envisions flies coating people who are about to die, but it’s never shown onscreen. It’s not the wrong choice to go with drama over horror, but it’s a noticeable one.
Flanagan furthers his reputation as a rising horror director by taking this freighted project on in the first place and making something coherent out of it. Rose the Hat is too great a villain and the film that contains her has too many pleasures to be fully dismissed as an overly reverent paean to its source material. The flawed Doctor Sleep takes a long time to get through, but this is one Big-Wheel ride worth enduring. C+
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