'Doctor Sleep': The Flawed and Forgotten Sequel to 'The Shining'

Many may know that Stephen King was no fan of the Stanley Kubrick movie made from his 1977 novel, The Shining. Yet, the creative liberties taken with the film have forever altered the story's legacy. For King, Kubrick's take on the novel simply failed to embody what he'd written. He famously summed up the differences by noting that while the book was warm, the movie was cold.

To come up with a sequel to such a legendary film was no easy task. But to come up with a sequel in line with King's vision and still pleasing fans of the 80s horror visionary's cinematic take is harder. In that way, what director Mike Flanagan created feels like a war between conflicted ideas. It hardly views like a sequel to the film at all; in some regards it doesn't even feel like a horror movie. It's strikingly devoid of the slow-rolling tension that characterized the original.

In fact, the first 80% of the movie takes place completely outside of the Overlook Hotel where the initial one was set. And until the climax, there are only a couple of nods made in that general direction. But the tone of the adaptation is, notably, still more in line with the source material than what's largely reputed as the magnum opus of horror movies.

King was actually a fan of the Doctor Sleep movie. But to please the horror literature icon ironically seems as though it came at the expense of the adoration of nearly all loyalists to the Kubrick classic.

While The Shining is marked by its methodical pacing and cold, detached atmosphere, the vibrant, colorful ambiance of Doctor Sleep reveals a jarringly different approach before the first scene has even ended. Flanagan, known for his adept handling of horror in Hush, Ouija, Oculus, The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, brings his distinctive flair to this sequel. Yet, while his style is undeniably modern and character-driven, the very opening veers far enough from the shadow cast by Kubrick's groundbreaking feature to leave the viewer forgetting what film they're even watching.

This concluding chapter to the Torrance saga appears confounded, lacking a cohesive narrative or clear takeaway. Throughout the movie, where it wants the sympathy of the viewer to lie is hardly even clear. In some narratives, that might be considered a strength. But here, it's difficult to get away from the feeling that this was never the intention.

Rose the Hat, played by Rebecca Ferguson, is the life force behind Doctor Sleep. With supporting actors Zach McClarnon and Emily Alyn Lind, the sequel's antagonists ooze in personality when compared with the tepid portrayals of Danny Torrance and Abra Stone, played respectively by Ewan McGregor and Kyliegh Curran. Though the latter musters an impressive acting range for a girl her age, she captures none of the eerie mystique that earned The Shining's Danny Llloyd an unspoken spot in the child actor hall of fame.

Cliff Curtis, played by Billy Freeman, stands for me as the only likeable protagonist. He's soft-spoken, kind, and his character is unmistakably cliche. But in the face of the film's other failures, his placement is forgivable. Ewan McGregor, on the other hand, pulls off the grand feat of neglecting to garner any inkling of sympathy for the child who supposedly endured the horrific events of The Shining. Danny is a bland trope of a recovering alcoholic. He's a walking Wikipedia page - a character that I'm confident ChatGPT could have written more cleverly.

Watching the events of the movie unfold, it's a bit hard not to actually root for Danny's demise. The personality of the production lies entirely with its antagonists. Their plight is the plot's greatest strength. They elicit sympathy from the viewer even as they do heinous things to stay alive.

The continuation of Danny's journey certainly isn't devoid of merit. It's visually enthralling, and parts of the plot are intensely gripping. One of the film's most captivating moments features Rose the Hat - immersed in an astral projection- flying over clouds and cities accompanied by the resonant thuds of her beating heart. She glides gracefully while The Newton Brothers soundtrack vibrates the room. Her deft landing on earth and dramatic return to her meditating body is a stunningly cinematic scene.

The exploration of immortality that ensues from there stands as another one of the film's more memorable moments. The showdown between Lind's Snakebite Andi and Danny Torrance is tense, shocking, harrowing and bone-chilling. King's macabre mind colors the narrative, even when it chugs and falters.

The imagery of Danny's return to the Overlook Hotel, with the benefit of 4K fidelity and high dynamic range, is impressive. But the reexploration of some of the hotel's signature staples comes across feeling by and large like fan service. If the events of the movie had centered around the hotel, the revisit wouldn't appear like such an afterthought. But instead, we're greeted with a hokily drawn out scene of Danny perusing the hotel's halls, soberly reliving his memories there, and recommuning with the dilapidated lodge's many spirits.

Flanagan's use of camera angles and lighting, especially during the sequences at the Overlook Hotel, attempt to pay homage to the Kubrick original. However, while the scenes are remarkable aesthetically, the suspense built through cinematic techniques in The Shining- those prolonged tracking shots, disconcerting close-ups, and muted, icy visuals - are altered to the point of non-recognition in Doctor Sleep. The new film, though polished, lacks that raw and palpable tension that elevated its predecessor onto such a pedestal. The primal sense of urgency written across Shelley Duvall's face in the 1980s classic isn't anything that Ferguson or Curran recreate.

A conversation unfolds between Danny and the ghostly bartender, Lloyd, who served his father in the prior movie. But it recaptures none of the magic from those interactions. The room is a faithful recreation, but that occult and spectral touch just isn't there. Loose ends are too easily tied. Rose the Hat, one of my favorite movie antagonists of recent months, is despatched with ease. The haunted, hallowed hotel burns to ashes with an unceremonious whimper.

There's an attempt to recreate the sort of ambiguous ending that defined the conclusion of its predecessor, but it comes across as cheap, trite and Hollywood rather than timeless, soul-stirring and downright unnerving. The revolutionary synth sounds that exalted the score of The Shining is nowhere to be found. What Flanagan's adaptation does in its place is sufficient, but easily forgotten.

Doctor Sleep, with all of its visual fidelity, modern production value, and talented cast, still fails to impart much more than a confused and distorted echo of its previous incarnation. To recapture the essence of what made the films of the past great is no easy task. The conflicted constraints that Flanagan tried to toe in bringing the enormous King sequel to the big screen is a challenge no director would revel in.

What Flanagan achieved still deserves admiration. That it pleased King more than its predecessor is no small feat. But the frigid, desolate world of Kubrick's The Shining was what the story was for so many. For Doctor Sleep to diverge so wildly from that vision was always bound to disappoint some.