'Doctor Sleep' Entertainingly Satisfies Both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick's Visions

Doctor Sleep is a film adaptation of Stephen King’s 2013 novel of the same name, which is the sequel to his 1977 novel The Shining.  At the same time, it’s also the sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining – which is based on that aforementioned King novel of the same name, but which has many significant narrative deviations from its source material.  Kubrick’s The Shining ended up being deemed as a horror cinema classic by many cinephiles and critics, but it’s also widely known that Stephen King hated it because of the changes Kubrick made to the plot.

Thus, although he already has an experience with adapting a Stephen King novel into film (i.e. Gerald’s Game), director-screenwriter Mike Flanagan must have found making Doctor Sleep a daunting task.  For not only did he need to follow up on what is widely considered as a cinematic masterpiece, but he also needed to craft Doctor Sleep in a way that would make it work as a sequel to two fundamentally different stories – King’s version and Kubrick’s version – and satisfy the fans of both.

I just saw the film very recently, and taking into consideration the complicated challenges that it entailed, I  think Flanagan did a pretty good job.

Doctor Sleep follows the adult Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) who, like his father Jack, has been struggling with alcoholicism.  But through the help of a kind man who befriended him named Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), he’s managed to turn his life around.  He also finds a meaningful application of his “shining” abilities while working as a hospice orderly.  With the help of a cat named Azzie, who can sense when someone is about to die, Danny comforts dying patients, earning himself the nickname “Doctor Sleep.”  Moreover, he finds himself becoming friends and telepathically linked with Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a young girl who possesses tremendous “shining” powers.

Meanwhile, the True Knot, a cult of psychic vampires led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), has been hunting children who possess “the shining” across the country to feed on their “steam” – the life force breathe out by those with “the shining” when they’re in pain.  Thus, to squeeze more “steam” from their victims, they would torture them as long as possible before they succumb to death.  By consuming “steam”, their lives are extended, as some of them have even walked on earth for millennia.  When Abra becomes their next target, she and Danny decide to fight back and stop their evil once and for all.

I extremely enjoyed this movie.  Although it’s drawn-out (especially the director’s cut, which clocks in at three hours!), there are no boring moments in it.  Compelling acting, phenomenal cinematography, and a sharp script sustain a highly gripping narrative.  Meanwhile, an enjoyably eerie atmosphere – supplemented greatly by amazing sound design – keeps the audience absorbed and tense.  Most importantly, it somehow nails the satisfying reconciliation of Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick’s visions that was required of it.  And, in relation to this, it definitely has a couple of notably cool “fan service” moments.

To be honest, I’m not exactly a huge fan of The Shining. I’ve seen it twice, and each time, I thought it was just okay.  Doctor Sleep, however, really appealed to my tastes.  I love the lucid “good vs. evil” dynamic it has (which is something I also greatly appreciated about other Stephen King horror stories like The Stand and It).  And as a sucker for redemption arcs, I like how Danny managed to overcome his traumas and brokenness.  I also like the way he was able to turn “the shining” from a curse to a gift – I found it really touching.

That being said, there are a handful of events in the book that I thought were better than the directions that the movie’s plot took.  (SPOILER) First, I think that the reunion between Danny and Jack Torrance (played in Doctor Sleep by Henry Thomas) was more impactful in the book.   In the book, Jack was instrumental in the defeat of Rose the Hat, and he and Danny had a somewhat heartwarming goodbye.  In the movie, however, their reunion scene wasn’t quite a reunion at all (although it was a powerful callback to an important scene in The Shining).  Second, in the movie, Dan, Billy, and Abra’s dad were killed.  But in the book, the good guys defeated the True Knot without suffering casualties.  It felt to me that, in order to make the film more emotional, Flanagan decided to give the good guys some L’s instead of the straight-up Dub they had in the book.  I kinda hated this particular decision.  I would have preferred it if Dan survived so that he could continue doing good as “Doctor Sleep”, as what happened in the book.

In the end, Doctor Sleep is awesome for the most part.  I definitely believe it’s one of the greatest Stephen King films to date (too bad it wasn’t rewarded for this with box office success).  Even though I had some dissatisfaction with its story, I really love the film overall.  In fact, if I had seen it prior to writing my“top 20 movies of 2019” list, it likely would have made it.