DOCTOR SLEEP (2019) **

I’ve liked every Mike Flanagan movie I’ve seen so far.  Yes, that includes Ouija:  Origin of Evil (mostly).  I particularly enjoyed his Stephen King adaptation, Gerald’s Game.  When he was announced as the director of Doctor Sleep, the sequel to King’s The Shining, I thought he’d be the perfect choice.  I guess I was wrong.  

Flanagan excels when he’s given a small, claustrophobic setting.  Oculus, Hush, and Gerald’s Game really show what the man can do with a smallish budget and a single location.  I think maybe Doctor Sleep was a little too sprawling for him to handle as it takes place in multiple states, crisscrossing around the country.  He also uses a multitude of special effects to show the use of the characters’ various extrasensory powers.  These range from hokey (like the Peter Pan flying scenes) to mildly effective, but the spirit-eating sequences just get too repetitive for their own good.  

I think the biggest problem is that Flanagan wants to serve two masters.  He wants to appease the fickle King who famously lambasted Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 version of his novel.  He also wants to worship at the altar of Kubrick, staging recreations of that film’s most iconic set pieces in almost a slavish manner.  Unfortunately, he never figures out whose dick he wants to suck; King’s or Kubrick’s.  Instead, he tries to service both cocks by going back and forth.  In doing so, all he succeeds in doing is jerking the audience off for nearly three hours.  

I want to state for the record that there are flashes of what could’ve been.  Ewan McGregor is excellent as the now-grown Danny Torrance, the young survivor of the first film.  The best scenes are of him sobering up and wrestling with the metaphorical demons of his past.  (The worst ones are when he wrestles with them literally.)  

The stuff with the caravan of gypsy astral-projecting, soul-sucking psychic vampires led by one of the members of 4 Non Blondes is… OK… I… guess?  I mean King had FORTY YEARS to come up with a sequel to The Shining and THIS is what he came up with?  It’s like he waited to the last minute of his deadline and wrote it on the car ride to his publisher like a kid turning in his homework on Monday morning.  Still, Rebecca Ferguson has an odd energy about her that makes her character, Rose the Hat a formidable villain.  

The film semi-works to a point.  Once it goes to The Overlook, it all goes downhill in cringe-inducing fashion.  That’s mostly due to Flanagan’s need to constantly remind viewers of how great The Shining was.  I mean most of the final act feels like a Parade of Homes version of The Overlook.  I mean there’s one scene where the elevators open up and the blood comes cascading out, and a character walks by, sees it, and kinda shrugs like, “Oh yeah.  That,” and keeps walking.  

What’s worse are the recreations of Kubrick’s 1980 film.  I know the de-aging CGI is a bit spotty nowadays, but I would’ve gladly taken some video game-looking footage of Jack Nicholson than the shit we get here.  I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but… HOOOOOOOOOOO BOY!  Is it ever bad.  Hell, I would’ve taken Steven Weber from the fucking TV remake version of The Shining than the shit Flanagan hands us.  

Fuck it.  Imma spoil it.  Leave now before the spoiling starts.  Okay, so when Danny goes into the Overlook Bar, he runs face to face with the Bartender, who is no longer the character Joe Turkel memorably played in the original, but… Jack Torrance.  The problem is, the role of Jack Torrance is one that very few people could fill, especially seeing as Jack Nicholson gave one of the all-time great performances in the 1980 original.  Instead of relying on CGI, or heck, letting Nicholson essay the role playing his age, they went out and got… HENRY THOMAS.  Elliott from E.T.?  Let me tell you, on a short list of people to inherit the role of Jack Torrance, Henry Thomas would be about my 675^th choice, right between Shaquille O’Neal and Steve Guttenberg.  

Plus, it doesn’t even make any fucking sense.  I mean, why would he be the bartender?  Yes, I know he’s just there to make Danny fall off the wagon by offering him booze, but shouldn’t he really be THE CARETAKER?  I mean, he’s ALWAYS been the caretaker, remember?  Did they forget about that shit?  

Is it my fault?  Am I holding the movie version of The Shining in too high of a regard?  Maybe my expectations are too high.  Thinking anyone could ever come closing to matching the brilliance of Kubrick is dumb of me, I know.  In fact, the stuff with the psychic vampires, bizarre as it is, was acceptable, mostly because, at the very least, it was giving Danny a chance to pass the torch to the next generation of Shiners while still allowing him to confront the trauma in his past.  However, tacking on a film student version of The Shining with a community theater-level set of players while trying to cram in shit that Kubrick (wisely) left out of King’s book doesn’t do anyone any favors whatsoever.   All it does is show (once again) that Kubrick was right and King was wrong when it came to what should and should not be on screen.  The fact that Flanagan tries to ape Kubrick so hard in the end just about singlehandedly derails the whole movie.  You also get a sense that no one would’ve dared done this when Kubrick was alive.  I mean, it’s one thing to wear grandma’s jewelry after she’s dead.  It’s another thing to fuck her corpse.

It kind of reminded me a little of another sequel to a great Kubrick classic, 2010.  That movie is a lot of fun when it’s doing its own thing and propelling the story forward.  When it’s gratuitously playing homage to the original, it just grinds to a fucking halt.  The only thing is, 2010 is a lot more entertaining than Doctor Sleep.

Another problem is that there are just too many subplots that gum up the works.  The shit with Danny getting sober and guiding dying old folks through to the other side in a hospice center are just fine.  The shit with the little psychic girl Abra (Kyliegh Curran) playing detective aren’t bad either, although some of her psychic shenanigans get to be a bit repetitive by the end.  Rose is a memorably weird character, but she gets way too much screen time, which ruins a bit of her mystery.  We honestly didn’t need to know all the ins and outs of her recruiting people to her ranks.  (They could’ve easily cut out all the shit with “Snakebite Andi’ and her indoctrination into the tribe and not missed a single beat.)

I can’t say I hated Doctor Sleep.  Ewan’s too good to completely dismiss it, even when it all turns to shit in the third act.  I just don’t thing I’ll be chopping down the door to see it again.