#also why did kubrick kill hallorann instead of having him save the day... :|

[geoffrey]

just heard the take once more that "the shining is about a guy going crazy in isolation" or "cabin fever" okay i get that its snobbish to harp on shit like this. but literally the hotel is alive and evil. multiple stephen king books have a character that is just shapeless evil that wants more evil to be done so it can grow. that is the antagonist in the shining and it tries to get jack to kill his whole family. its not a hallucination because he feels cooped up. the isolation is important because it traps the characters with this evil it is not what makes jack act like that. THE HOTEL IS A CHARACTER. WHY DO YOU EVEN THINK DANNY HAS PSYCHIC POWERS!!!

[theinventorofstraightedges-blog]

Doctor Sleep (2019, dir. Mike Flanagan) REVIEW

It was the upcoming release of this film which impelled me to read Doctor Sleep, bumping it up to read immediately after my rereading of The Shining, and so I went into the film with a relatively fresh (maybe 2 weeks) experience of the source material.

The trailers for the film looked to be promising, though I had not seen anything of director Mike Flanagan’s previous work (The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald’s Game), and so I went into the film with a great sense of expectation: this was going to be a Good Film. And so, I bought my ticket and went to see it; first showing, opening day.

The opening of the film serves perfectly to draw the viewer in, with a real sense of dread at the True Knot preying on children. The slow, creeping dread as the camera repeatedly pans from Rose the Hat and the child to reveal more and more members of the Knot standing there, silently, watching is patent King tension building, all leading to when they fall upon the child. In those first few scenes, I felt the same clammy terror I felt reading about the Knot in the early pages in King’s novel.

Even before seeing the film I was intrigued by the nature of it, yes, it is an adaptation of the eponymous 2013 novel, which is a sequel to King’s The Shining (1977), it is also a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of 1980, which notably diverged from the source material. And so, in the film, it was interesting to see the changes the film made, both to agree with Kubrick’s interpretation, and also to give it its own identity. These changes are evident to see even from the very start for someone who has read the book: the Knot are noticeably smaller on the screen than they are in the novel. At first I was unsure as to why this would be done, but it serves the dual purposes of getting rid of largely useless named characters in the book (I liked the sense of community they had in the book and how individual they are, but they ultimately serve no plot purpose), and to also emphasise the hunger and desperation the True Knot feel as they hunt for steam across America.

I was intrigued by how the film would treat the scenes with Dick Hallorann (this time played by Carl Lumbly) in Florida, who in the Kubrick film (played by Scatman Crothers), is killed by Jack with his axe. By having him appear as a vision from the shining when he presents Danny with, it makes his appearance as one later to warn Dan about the danger the True Knot poses for Abra natural. The film’s adherence to a narrative which coheres with Kubrick’s is extremely laudable, especially with the ending, but more on that later.

As mentioned above, the True Knot is noticeably smaller, a change which I am happy with, and is a precedent to further character changes which come part and parcel with any adaptation of a book, especially a King one. These other character changes I was less than happy about. Concetta Reynolds receives only a passing mention as someone who serves in the film only as a plot device to get Abra’s mother out of the house, when in the book she is a tenacious and loveable character who factors heavily into the book’s ending. The removal of the character of Casey Kingsley who in the book functions as Dan’s AA mentor, means in the film his role is filled by Doctor John Dalton (Bruce Greenwood), which means that John Dalton’s role in the film must be taken up by Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), who is now a tattooed youngish man, thus keeping Dalton out of the action he partakes in in the book. The whole thing feels slightly stilted in its handling, if I’m being honest, because it entirely messes with the great camaraderie and sense of community fostered between them in the book. This, then, feeds into one of the larger problems I had with the film: the deaths.

At the end of the book, all of our protagonists survive and the True Knot are vanquished – it is a well-won happy ending, everyone deserves it, most of all Danny. In the film, however, Abra’s father, David (Zackary Momoh) is killed and Snakebite Andi compels Billy to blow his brains out, while Doctor John – in his new Casey Kingsley role – is nowhere to be seen. While I realise that it builds up the tension and action of the film, to me it felt like it had partly overwritten one of the core messages for the book: that hope does exist for everyone, and that good will eventually triumph in the face of unspeakable evils. Am I griping a bit? Yes, but it was something that bothered me largely during the film.

The last change between source material and onscreen adaptation that irked me was only a minor detail, but while reading it I was deeply touched by it, and was disappointed by it not appearing onscreen. In the book, Dan is saved from danger by some supernatural force shoving one of his enemies out of the way, and Dan and Abra acknowledge that it was neither of them. Afterwards it is revealed to us that it was the spirit of Jack Torrance who did this, looking out for the son he could not protect while he was alive. It is a thoroughly heartfelt and touching moment redemptive of his character, which shows the goodness in Jack that we see trying to escape from the Overlook’s control near the end of King’s The Shining.

I simply loved everything else about the film. All of the actors, from Ewan McGregor as Dan, all the way down to Kyleigh Curran as Abra, turn in high quality performances that make you really empathise with them, and their plights, even Rebecca Ferguson’s Rose the Hat, and Zahn McClarnon’s Crow Daddy. I was especially captivated by McGregor’s performance as the alcoholic Dan at the start of the film. The desperation and sadness etched into his face truly was a sight to behold. The removal of the extraneous members of the True Knot also help in creating a tighter narrative, as, like all of King’s work, it is largely character driven.

Another admirable thing about Doctor Sleep was its aversion to jumpscares – instead choosing to increase dread through the slow build-up of tension, with the discordant bells striking throughout in the background, adding to the unease. As well as this, I was horrified (in the best possible way) by the effects for when Abra traps Rose’s hand in the filing cabinet and she has to tear it out. The effects for this were gruesomely realistic and had me wincing away from the screen in the theatre. And the scene with the baseball kid -Oh Man – it’s one thing reading the scene on paper, something which was harrowing in itself, but actually hearing Jacob Tremblay scream and scream as Bradley Trevor is uncomfortably heart-wrenching and horrifying: terrific stuff. It also doesn’t go without saying that the horror is increased by the reproduction of scenes from Kubrick’s interpretation of the Shining, with all of the actors giving it their all to fill the gargantuan shoes of such a classic horror flick.

(Also, the casting of the same actor, Henry Thomas, as BOTH the recreated bartender Lloyd and Jack Torrance (played respectively by Joe Turkel and Jack Nicholson in The Shining), I thought, was a genius move, which further serves to show us the how the Overlook preyed on Jack’s own psyche to seduce him in The Shining)

And now, the ending. I know it has become almost the norm to bash Stephen King’s endings, and I had problem’s with the ending to Andy Muschietti’s IT: Chapter Two, which came out only this September, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the ending of Doctor Sleep. While it annoyed me slightly that Dan had perished in the Overlook, I recognised that as unimportant compared to the beauty of the ending. It does what no one ever thought possible: it reconciles King with Kubrick. By giving the original ending to The Shining, where the adult male Torrance goes down to the Boiler room and lets it explode to save someone they care about heals the split between these two which have been at loggerheads for so long. It also is in keeping with one of King’s most pervasive narrative devices, the cyclical narrative, while also still promulgating one of the novel’s key themes: the ties that bind the Torrances, and other people together, this idea that is espoused in the novel by Dick Hallorann himself of there always being someone to pass the torch onto. And we can see this at the end, too, when Abra goes into the bathroom to deal with the ghostly Mrs Massey, directly paralleling the movie’s opening scene with Danny.

Overall, Doctor Sleep, is a thoroughly enjoyable film, with a distinctive visual and narrative style which captures the spirit of King’s novel, while also paying respect to what has come before it. Well worth the price of admission.

My rating: 8.5/10