***SPOILERS AHEAD*** - after all, this movie is five years old.
I finally got around to watching Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's sequel to his classic novel The Shining, entitled Doctor Sleep. Starring Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson, this 2019 film actually serves as both a sequel to King's 1977 book and Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, which King infamously detested. This was a smart and admirable move I think; Kubrick's film is arguably even more famous and respected than the book now, so trying to make a cinematic sequel to that story while ignoring the cinematic adaptation of its predecessor would've been a mess for its intended audience to follow. Fortunately Mike Flanagan is a surefooted enough director to pull off this balancing act. He pays much homage to Kubrick, at times TOO much, but it's done in service of the new material and executed in a satisfying way.
The story picks up shortly after the events of The Shining. Danny Torrance and his mother Wendy have moved to Florida to try and put their lives back together after their traumatic saga. With help from the Overlook's chef Dick Halloran, whom you might recall died in the Kubrick film but not in the King novel (This film cleverly shores up that discrepancy), Danny learns to psychically compartmentalize the Overlook's terrors that continue to haunt him. Fast-forward thirty years and the adult Dan Torrance (an excellently somber McGregor) has not only locked away those ghosts but turned to alcohol in order to cut himself off from the "shine" altogether. He's now a forty-something, out of work barfly who's about to hit bottom, eventually cleaning up and becoming a hospice orderly.
At the same time we're introduced to a roving clan of what you might call psychic vampires - nigh-immortals who feast on the life essence of children blessed with the same gift as Dan. Led by Rose the Hat (a splendidly charismatic Ferguson), the True Knot as they call themselves, kidnap kids and slowly murder them while absorbing their energy (they call it "steam"), which unnaturally extends their own lives.
One particularly disturbing kill draws the attention of another gifted child, a young girl named Abra (a confident and precocious Kyliegh Curran), who makes a psychic connection with Dan. Rose can sense Abra's incredible strength and thinks if the True Knot can capture her, they'd be able to feast on her essence for years. Abra and Dan work together to stop Rose, and Dan knows just the perfect spot where the final showdown should take place....
Doctor Sleep's premise is pretty classic Stephen King material and the story beats are much more in line with his version of The Shining. The supernatural elements are overt and clearly outlined, as opposed to Kubrick's ambiguous reading. But aesthetically the film owes much more to Kubrick, borrowing the steadicam shots, the slow zooms and dissolves, many of the music cues, and even the deliberate pacing. And of course the sets from The Shining are lovingly recreated and we get to wander around our favorite old haunted house for a little while.
The film's finale though borrows from the original King novel in such a way that King himself said this movie actually redeemed Kubrick's for him. No small feat there. When King and Flanagan discussed how to adapt this story King initially insisted that the Overlook Hotel should not be present, as it was blown up in The Shining novel. But Flanagan won him over by changing the Doctor Sleep ending to mirror his original Shining climax, and also an original scene where Danny finally gets to confront his father about the trauma Jack put him through (This is a great sequence featuring an unexpected actor filling Jack Nicholson's shoes).
Overall Doctor Sleep is an adeptly crafted marriage of King's and Kubrick's visions for the Shining universe. It manages to honor both of King's books and Kubrick's film, while also including some meaty dramatic material created wholly by Flanagan. The performances are all very strong, particularly the unresolved childhood suffering conveyed by McGregor and the gleefully parasitic nature Ferguson brings to Rose. Michael Fimognari's cinematography often quotes that of John Alcott but he also brings his own voice to the new material. The conflict between the three psychically connected characters takes some surprising and fascinating turns, and their mental exchanges are handled much more viscerally than in a lot of films with this theme. It's not the masterpiece that was The Shining, but Doctor Sleep is a very worthy followup.
I give the film ***1/2 out of ****.
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