Doctor Sleep

For a horror film, the protagonists are surprisingly never in danger. I was not expecting this film to live up to Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, yet it still feels like a made-for-TV love letter to its predecessor rather than an individual sequel.

What this film did right was how it decided to show what happened in The Shining. They did not do what most films would do: play the original film’s footage with heightened quality, or replacing the actors’ faces with CGI heads from the original actors. Instead, this film goes through the painstaking process of finding actors that look similar to the original cast and reshoot the necessary scenes to the finest detail. Danny’s rolling through the hallways on his big wheel has the same steady cam stalking behind him, boosted with the original score rising from its grave. Somehow these small scenes are the best moments, especially when Danny is still a kid and is trying to understand how to escape the trauma he experienced. It does not lazily slap the Overlook hotel at the end for ticket sales; it physically breathes life back into it and wakes up the sleeping giant because the film wants to celebrate the greatness of its predecessor.

One of the core ideas of Danny’s shine, narratively, is that nothing ever goes away. This gives reason for all the callback moments and flashbacks, and it does it really well. There are hints in the background that somehow create their own soul, drifting from scene to scene like a phantom in the closet. This creative edge to every scene is a lot of fun to experience, and the story makes sure to keep looping back to moments that happened earlier. The entire film feels like a continuous cycle the characters cannot escape… but they can. The film stresses this fear of things coming back after death, yet when the bad guys die they shrivel up into a cloud of smoke and disappear forever. The final stand off is supposed to be tense, where Dan is using all of his power and knowledge to defeat Rose the Hat, but 20 minutes before they just shot her friends and they no longer a problem. Why not shoot her? The answer to the problem is in the film, staring down at you, which makes it difficult to suspend my disbelief. This is the main problem of the film: it is not scary. There is no overhanging threat of danger, no moments of me shrinking in my seat, none of that.

The Shining is a masterwork of horror because it feels alive. The film itself crawls out of the screen and pulls your primal fear out of your chest. The score, the steady cam, the acting, and the absolute insanity of the production itself give the sense that Stanley Kubrick’s film is bigger than life. Doctor Sleep does not even come close to that. It feels so small, even though it tries to expand the story across the nation. Rather than staying in one location to give the setting a sense of character, this film jumps from state to state as if it is switching channels. One seen happens in New Hampshire, and then the next shows them driving to Iowa. The beginning of the film starts in Florida, then a different part in Florida, then somewhere in the west coast, then New Hampshire, then Iowa, then back to New Hampshire, just to end with a pitstop at Ohio onward to the climax in Colorado. It is absolutely delirious. There is no time to plant your feet in the scene, and mixed with the odd choice of having killable people as the opposing force really knocks this film off any pedestal.

However, the characters are really well done in this film. Rose the Hat is fully fleshed out on her connection to the cult and need to stay in power. Her hippie-like way of living and her flirtatious dialogue contrasts with her manipulative schemes in a unique way, especially with Rebecca Ferguson’s brilliant performance. Dan’s second chapter of his story highlights the cyclical idea of King’s works through his alcoholism and relapses into the Overlook hotel, and Abra expresses both the fun and fear of having the gift of the shining. Ewan McGregor really brings out that Steven-King flare in this film in how he plays Dan. Whenever he is in his bedroom or helping with the elderly pass on, he brings out the best moments of character and humanity. The cast is great, the dialogue is solid, and the film looks really pretty with great camera work. If the film knew how to make Rose the Hat actually threatening, the character score would have been much higher.

Overall, the story is fine. The film is well done, but the scares are found wanting. Rebecca Ferguson, Ewan McGregor, and the teenage actress, Kyleigh Curran, are fantastic. You can tell how much the crew behind the camera loved Kubrick’s The Shining, and the craft of the actual filmmaking is great. Where I stall in the excitement is that the antagonist—instead of an unstoppable spiritual force that takes hold of the characters’ soul and drives them mad—is just a bunch of soul-sucking hippies.

Story Rating: 5/10

Character Rating: 7/10