As much as I love The Shining, I’m not sure if we needed a sequel nearly 40 years later. Having read the book Doctor Sleep, I think that even Stephen King may agree with me. While the book is entertaining, it is also a simple rewrite away from having nothing to do with The Shining. Basically, if you changed the names of the characters and locations, nobody would be shouting that this is a ripoff of the original. Much like the source novel, Doctor Sleep is an entertaining enough movie, but it lacks scares and pales in comparison to the original classic.
Decades after the events at the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance has grown up to struggle with alcoholism just like his father. Largely living as a drifter, he takes a job at a hospice while dealing with his traumatic past and avoiding picking up a bottle. He still shines, though, and is contacted by a young girl named Abra that has the strongest shining that he has ever encountered. Both of them are soon hunted by a group of immortal killers that live off of steam, which is a mist that is given off when someone that shines is dying. The steam gets stronger (and more valuable) if the person’s death is painful, so these psychic vampires basically go around hunting people that shine and torturing them to death. The movie is then a long showdown with Danny and Abra on one side and those assholes on the other.
The film is most interesting as a simultaneous adaptation of the novel and a sequel to the film version of The Shining because that is a difficult line to walk. The film and book versions of The Shining are very different and King has always hated Kubrick’s film. The book Doctor Sleep is, obviously, a sequel to the book The Shining, so it doesn’t match up with the original movie in many significant ways. Chief among those differences being that the hotel blows up at the end of the novel The Shining and is, therefore, not in the book Doctor Sleep, but it is featured prominently in the movie Doctor Sleep. In fact, this movie largely recreates the ending of the novel The Shining, undoing many of the changes that Kubrick made when he made the original film. I was curious how the movie was going to pull this off, adapting one thing while being a sequel to another, and the filmmakers did an admirable job with it.
That being said, holy shit does this still feel unnecessary. The main plot feels completely disconnected from The Shining until the last act and it really doesn’t even feel like a horror film for the most part. It feels more like a road trip movie, like Smokey and the Bandit but less fun and with psychic vampires. Entertaining, sure, but not exactly what you might envision for a sequel to one of the greatest haunted house movies ever made. Even when the story does finally arrive at the Overlook, it feels like unnecessary fan service as the characters go through a check list of characters and locations from the original movie while looking at the audience and going “hey, remember that?!” The characters don’t even really give an explanation for why they return to the hotel, as that seems like a really bad fucking idea based on my knowledge of the original. It would be like returning to Elm Street because you are having bad dreams. I just don’t really understand the endgame here.
Aside from not being scary or particularly logical, I have a really hard time understanding the powers that people have in this movie. In the original, the shining basically meant that you could see ghosts and read minds of other people with the shining. Here, the shining can basically turn you into Professor X if the story calls for it. It can also be useless, though, if the story calls for it. As for the villains, I have no idea what they are capable of. Sometimes they seem almost all-powerful, other times it seems like Kevin McCallister could kill them all with a single paint can. Sometimes our hero characters are so powerful that the villains are terrified of them, other times are heroes are completely overpowered by the villains. I have no idea what anyone in this movie can and can’t do.
Despite all of my issues, I don’t hate this movie. The performances are all solid and it never felt boring. I was somewhat dreading this movie because of the 2 and ½ hour running time, but I didn’t check my watch once. The characters and the core concept are all interesting, they just don’t feel like The Shining. I really do wish that this was rewritten as an original film because it fails largely due to inevitable comparisons with the original. As the plot approaches the iconic Overlook, the film goes to great lengths to recreate the look and feel of the original and that doesn’t do the film any favors.
Doctor Sleep is a decent movie that lives in the shadow of an excellent movie. For everything that it does well, you are reminded of something that its predecessor did far better. Watching this reminded me a bit of watching Blade Runner 2049; if you are going to be a sequel 30+ years later to an absolute classic, then you can’t just be decent. You need to be damn good or you will just be forgotten. Much like Blade Runner 2049, I don’t think I will be rewatching Doctor Sleep anytime soon.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Sleep_(2019_film)#/media/File:Doctor_Sleep_(Official_Film_Poster).png
