Doctor Sleep is one of the scariest Stephen King adaptations in years, thanks in large part to the formidable True Knot. In contrast to The Shining’s villain, which despite working through Jack was really the Overlook Hotel itself, Doctor Sleep benefits and stands apart by having physical antagonists with more concrete goals and methods for Dan and Abra to battle. And it is clear that they will do anything to win, brutally murdering children in the film’s most hard-to-watch scenes. One of these minor characters is actually played by a surprisingly high-profile child actor, his presence distracting until he’s tasked with believably screaming his way through a very R-rated death.Writer/director Mike Flanagan’s eye for bringing metaphysicality to life on film has long been one of his greatest assets and it serves him well again here. Doctor Sleep doesn’t quite approach the singular sense of unreality in Kubrick’s film, but Flanagan’s methods of visually communicating what the Shining is and how it can work through its various hosts provide a source of constant unease and danger. The twists and turns Flanagan mines out of that power both deepen our understanding of what it means to shine and keep the film interesting throughout its considerable 2 hours and 33 minutes.
Through its lofty scenes of psychic warfare and intense character beats, Doctor Sleep is anchored by a wealth of strong performances. Ewan McGregor’s Dan Torrance is a heartbreakingly damaged man, torn between helping Abra fight the True Knot and keeping the ghosts of his past locked away. The weight of Dan’s trauma is especially easy to sympathize with here because we know exactly how horrific those ghosts are. Kyliegh Curran holds her own as gifted teen Abra, at her most effective in her confrontations with the True Knot, when she’s tasked with flipping between scared kid and supernatural warrior in the blink of a creepy, milky eye. The standout of the cast is Rebecca Ferguson’s villain, Rose the Hat. As the leader of the True Knot, Ferguson imbues Rose with a malice and ferocity that make her a terrifying foe. In her best moments, Ferguson rivals the unhinged madness Jack Nicholson brought to Jack Torrance.
Ewan McGregor explains how Jack Torrance haunts Danny in Doctor Sleep:
It’s when Doctor Sleep drifts away from evocation to straight-up recreation that Flanagan starts to overplay his hand. To be clear, not all of Doctor Sleep’s Shining love goes amiss. Scenes in which shot composition, edits, and sound cues are reused feel like rewarding nods to Kubrick’s Shining. Even Carl Lumbly’s brief appearance as Dick Hallorann ends up being effective, with Lumbly giving us just enough Scatman Crothers to make this feel like the kindly Hallorann we know without feeling like a full-on impersonation. The same can’t be said about Alex Essoe’s Wendy Torrance. Essoe doesn’t quite pull off the physical or vocal qualities of Shelley Duvall’s iconic performance, so visions of her ordeal at the Overlook, itself staggeringly recreated, have a bizarre quality of documentary re-enactment.
Yes, The Overlook has a part to play here, and again, it’s a mixed bag. The artistry of these scenes is undeniable, with the sets painstakingly recreating Kubrick’s Overlook, and often being similarly photographed too. But the scenes which take place at the hotel suffer from some egregious moments of incongruity, like when a character not present for The Shining’s events witnesses an iconic scare from that film with bemusement rather than horror. That dissonance continues when one of the Overlook’s familiar minions appears in a scene that alternately serves an important thematic function while also being one of Doctor Sleep’s least successful recreations of the past. While it goes a little overboard, Doctor Sleep’s third act does deserve credit for how it reconciles King’s novel and Kubrick’s film. It’s clear throughout that Flanagan has an equal respect for both versions, evident in his clever repurposing of beats from King’s Shining that Kubrick changed.
