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Stephen King's Doctor Sleep

Traumatized Dan Torrance meets fellow Shiner Abra, a very powerful psychic. Abra needs against the ruthless Rose the Hat and her clan of psychic vampires.

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Stephen King’s distaste for Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING is no secret - the author famously called the film “too cold” and has openly criticized Jack Nicholson’s career-defining performance and Kubrick’s general grasp of the material. In an effort to regain control of his work, King wrote Doctor Sleep, a meandering sequel that ponders what Danny Torrance’s life might be like as an adult. Mike Flanagan’s cinematic adaptation of that novel attempts to reconcile these two warring visions by drawing from both worlds, and ends up a disjointed and nearly unwatchable mess.

After a few instantly recognizable synth stabs from Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s grumpy score, the film introduces its goofy villain, Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), the leader of a vampiric cult called True Knot. We soon learn she and her gang of weirdos feed off “the shine” to stay immortal. Meanwhile, Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), a scrappy alcoholic telepathically communicates with Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a teenage girl on the other side of the country. Flanagan spends two hours aping Marvel-style storytelling until these three worlds predictably converge in an not-so-epic showdown at the Overlook Hotel.

McGregor, barely concealing his Scottish accent, dials in a performance sorely lacking the madness and intensity this material calls for. Elsewhere, Rebecca Ferguson’s supercool presence simply cannot hide the fact that Rose the Hat and her gang of fedora-wearing vampires are the silliest villains to grace the screen this year. They strut around forests hunting for kids to kill, but come off looking like they’re auditioning for a Stevie Nicks video, circa 1993.

Flanagan playfully subverts iconography from the 1980 film, though it feels weirdly lifeless. The twisty hallways, the naked bathtub lady, and the bloody elevators are all skillfully recreated, and serve a genuine purpose within the story, but there’s just no emotional impact beyond seeing a familiar image take new form. Perhaps Steven Spielberg spoiled it for everyone with the brief Overlook Hotel sequence in last year’s underrated READY PLAYER ONE - those thrilling two minutes offer more of a nostalgic mindfuck than anything in DOCTOR SLEEP’s exhausting two-and-a-half-hour running time.

Like Kubrick’s film and a lot of King’s work, substance abuse looms over the story, and brings it down to earth - the only sincerity DOCTOR SLEEP offers are its scenes dealing with Danny’s alcoholism and family trauma. The rest of the time, Flanagan’s vision feels like a generic mix between any random superhero adventure and an old episode of The X-Files, with some supernatural horror elements thrown in as an afterthought.

This is not a particularly honest film, and there’s no mystery to unravel. The filmmakers are always ten steps ahead of the viewer, and whimsically unleash ridiculous surprises and new information that betray earlier developments. After one particularly absurd reveal involving human flight, one starts to wonder just how many powers these True Knot people have, and whether this cinematic universe has any discernible rules. If it does, Flanagan is constantly willing to break them for the sake of convenience, and by doing so, loses the audience’s trust along the way.

Jared Abbott

Credits

Original title: Stephen King's Doctor Sleep
USA 2019, 152 min
Language: English
Genre: Horror, Literary Film Adaptations, Fantasy
Director: Mike Flanagan
Author: Mike Flanagan
DOP: Michael Fimognari
Music: The Newton Brothers
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Bruce Greenwood, Jacob Tremblay, Carel Struycken
FSK: 16
Release: 21.11.2019

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Screenings

  • OV Original version
  • OmU Original with German subtitles
  • OmeU Original with English subtitles
English/with English subtitles
All languages

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