‘Doctor Sleep‘, written and directed by Mike Flanagan in 2019 is a ‘sequel’. It takes, I think, a significant dose of audacity (not to say chutzpah) to make a sequel to one of the most famous and best-made horror thrillers in the history of cinema – ‘The Shining‘ created by Stanley Kubrick in 1980. The risk of comparisons with a high level standard is obvious. At the same time the film is an adaptation of Stephen King‘s novel, which is in turn a sequel to the book on which Kubrick‘s film was based. ‘The Shining‘ was a summit meeting between Kubrick‘s creativity and Jack Nicholson‘s madness. Mike Flanagan did not have the courage to stray far enough from King‘s novel (who disliked the first movie) as Kubrick had done and to replace elements of popular culture with ambiguity and pure horror. Trying to combine too many genres, borrowing characters and sets from Kubrick‘s film, but remaining too faithful to the story in King‘s novel, Flanagan made a reasonable movie but one which is far from the depth and thrill of the original.
Dan Torrance, the kid from ‘The Shining‘, survived a childhood haunted by ghosts, but he seems to miss his life until he meets good people to lead him on the right path of a (too) normative existence. As a job, he uses his powers to soothe the last moments of the terminaly sick elders in a hospital. In his free time, he enters into telepathic communication with a teenager girl with similar powers and visions. When she notices the serial murders of a gang of – let us call them – vampires who prolong their lives by ritually and sadistically killing children with similar powers and absorbing their ‘shining’, the two have no choice but to meet and to act together to destroy the forces of darkness. The problem is that everything that was metaphoric at Kubrick (starting with ‘the shining’) becomes explicit graphics in Flanagan‘s film. From a well-constructed, deep but subtle horror world we are thrown into a film that would belong to the genre ‘teenagers vs. vampires’ if it was not populated with violent graphic scenes that restrict the audiences to whom I would recommend this film.
Ewan McGregor is the right choice for the role of Dan Torrence 39 years after ‘The Shining‘ and the too idealized elements of his character cannot be attributed to him but to the script. The two female characters are real revelations. Rebecca Ferguson is Rose the Hat, a character who at first seems out of Lewis Caroll’s writings but who turns out to be one of the most successful incarnations of sexy and evil witches I’ve seen on screen lately. I don’t like the roles of children or teenagers in movies that I wouldn’t recommend to children and teenagers, but I can’t help but notice the extraordinary role of Kyliegh Curran, a teenage actress with a remarkable personality and expressiveness, who I hope will grow into an outstanding mature actress. The last part of ‘Doctor Sleep‘ recreates the sets and characters from ‘The Shining‘ and from a visual point of view it looks very good. In general, the story has rhythm and fluency. I believe that the film will please many fans of the genres that Mike Flanagan mixed in the production pot, but Kubrick‘s admirers can’t help but notice that it’s closer to the popular culture of Stephen King‘s novels and to the scripts of most of the movies which they inspired rather than the subtlety and depth of Stanley Kubrick‘s films. Flanagan is not Kubrick, nor is the film industry of 2019 the same as in 1980.