Every now and then, you have a week where you’re finding nothing but disappointment. Everything you do winds up not quite matching the potential that you think it deserves.
In the grand scheme of things, having a disappointing week for movies isn’t a big issue. However, it does make it difficult to start this column with any enthusiasm. If you’re going to dedicate 2000 words to something, why not make it something great? But the truth is that I didn’t watch a movie worthy of “Best” this week. What I saw came up short in these minor ways that would qualify more as really good movies that I probably won’t be thinking too heavily about in the years ahead. No, this is one of those weeks without a masterpiece on the docket.
All I had was Doctor Sleep (2019).
Let me back up for a second and be clear. I do not think that Doctor Sleep is a bad movie. In fact, it’s a far more successful adaptation than it has any right to be. For a film that knowingly exists as a sequel to The Shining (1980), it does an incredible hat trick of managing to continue the characters without being totally committed to the same plot beats. This isn’t to say that it avoids moments that are directly pulled from the first. There are whole moments that are repurposed to the current plot but shot with the same choreography of the first.
In most people’s hands, this would be a fairly annoying and pandering tool. Why should art just be a recreation of something we know is greater? In nobody’s books is Mike Flanagan a better director than Stanley Kubrick. It makes sense to imitate one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the 20th century, but if Ready Player One (2018) taught us anything, replication doesn’t automatically make something great. You cannot just use imagery from The Shining and expect it to be a masterful commentary on it.
With that said, I think that it’s wrong to write off Flanagan in any way. Among the many directors who are currently out there adapting Stephen King novels to the big screen, I’d argue that he is one of the best. Whereas Andy Muschietti flew too high with IT: Chapter Two (2019), Flanagan had a way of conveying the heart of King’s work, bringing out the characters first and allowing the drama and horror to be built around it.
I think of Gerald’s Game (2018), which should go down as one of the best adaptations of a King novel this whole century. With that said, it’s an uncomfortable story by the end that may be a bit too disturbing (if the word “de-gloving” makes you cringe, you’ll know why) for rewatch value. Beyond that, it’s kind of an amazing feat of limited sets and a strong internal struggle that grows with Flanagan’s directorial decisions. He conveys a story that is inherently not cinematic as this strong, claustrophobic story that never loses its tension.
In a lot of ways, Doctor Sleep is Flanagan’s IT: Chapter Two. It’s a bigger, loftier project that has every chance to go wrong. Gerald’s Game is a straightforward thriller compared to Doctor Sleep. In order to understand everything that goes on over the course of the director’s cut’s three hour running time, you kind of need to be a scholar of King’s ideology.
You can get by without a deep understanding, but I am astounded that Doctor Sleep succeeds where The Dark Tower (2017) failed. To put it simply, the 2017 film struggled for decades to adapt one of the wildest fantasy franchises in literary history. How do you introduce audiences to high concepts like magic and alternate worlds full of these strange creatures and ideas? To me, it always made sense (start at the beginning where it’s the least complicated) and that’s one of the reasons that The Dark Tower remains a disappointing mess. It could’ve embraced its silliness, the wildest ideas King ever put to page. Instead, it was a generic tripe.
So to have Doctor Sleep go in the direction that it does immediately perks my eyes open. After being burned with The Dark Tower, it is strange to find a film that so openly explores the magic of “the shining” without having to complicate things. It treats it straightforward, using it as a device for character study. We come to understand how these characters feel like outsiders, perpetually tortured by inner demons. To some extent, you don’t even need to see The Shining to appreciate Doctor Sleep. All you need is to accept these concepts as truth and the story will reward you nicely.
With that said, its most Dark Tower element was also the one that annoyed me the most. If you are coming to this movie wanting answers for the first, it’s all a bit frustrating and works to undo the mystery. For me, the thing that makes The Shining gleam all these years later is that there is unexplained magic causing this madness, where only certain individuals have “the shining” that stands to persevere and save the day. It also works as a metaphor about King’s alcoholism because while we can understand addiction as a concept, its impact on our personal lives can never be understood at the moment. They’re like demons taking us over.
That is what’s brilliant about The Shining.
In Doctor Sleep, we have a new headache to deal with. They’re called The True Knot, and they’re vampire-like gypsies that roam around. They attack vulnerable children who have the shining, sucking them of their power. Think of them like a cult, a hierarchy where the lower members have to do the grunt work while the leader, Rose the Hat, gets to hang around in their own urban caravan, plotting their revenge on one person in particular: Danny Torrance, son (of course) of Jack Torrance, still lying frozen in the snow of The Overlook Hotel.
I wonder how different this story would be if King wasn’t obsessed with connecting every book together, needing to make “The Dark Tower” the craziest fantasy epic in history. Would we get The True Knot? This feels like one of those superfluous details that people would hate him for. It’s pointlessly metaphysical and meant to be some unexplained horror. It’s the least exciting part of the movie, even if the threat of them looms over every frame.
I suppose there are ways to justify them. After all, Danny is dealing with childhood trauma throughout the whole story. It’s what keeps the incessant references to The Shining from ever feeling tacky. Everything comes back to riding his tricycle in those hallways because in some ways he never has left there. Some part of him is trapped there and it informs every bad decision he’s made. He can compartmentalize it all he wants, but it will always be there. He must find a way to escape it, but it only comes by literally fighting the living dead. He confides in Dick Hallorann, himself a ghost now that serves as a wisdom dispenser throughout the movie.
This is by no means a directly comprehensible movie, and it’s what works best about it. King is clearly in a fun mode, wanting to use his strange grasp of spiritual themes within horror to explore character. As Danny confides in Abra Stone, he finds a reason to live. He must keep Abra from suffering the same trauma that he had, finding genuine compassion that becomes the endearing heart of this story. For a story that often dives into ridiculous, melodramatic ideas, this heart of the story somehow justifies it enough that it becomes enjoyable.
Even at three hours, I was never bored. Even if this pales in comparison to The Shining, I found myself more willing to look at it as a character study of trauma. It explains his addiction, his need to find support groups through AA, and not become a burden like his dad. Every time he’s reminded of him, the film feels a little familiar. It’s always coming back to that moment, and the audience knows it too well. He can be stuck living out the same story if he’s not careful. That is why having someone who not only sees him but also listens feels crucial. We are not our parents. We have the chance to live our own lives and not be sucked in by vampires.
I guess I get why King told the story like this. It’s kind of clever in some strange way. Even then, I’m left a bit baffled by why this story needed to be told. In his later years, King has become more obsessed with high concepts and little payoff. While this plays too much into his gimmicks, what it does is prove why he’ll always be a singular author.
This isn’t a scary movie, at least not 80% of the time. What it is is a fantasy drama about the self, eager to escape a self-inflicted prison. In that way, I like that it’s different enough. Flanagan understands when to tie into the past, making a sequel that feels in line with the first but isn’t tonally using it as a crutch. I don’t know that it always works, but it’s at least being reverent enough that it isn’t annoying. There have been more cynical sequels made around King’s material, and there’s some heart here.
I’m genuinely curious to know what Flanagan’s career will look like. I wish that I have seen more of his Non-King work because from what I gather he creates genre movies that are more substantial than scares. They’re about characters that we grow to care for, finding depth and purpose to any peril that will happen over the next few hours. It’s what the best of King’s work has, and it makes sense as to why they connect so succinctly.
Even if I don’t find Doctor Sleep to be as rewarding of a movie as Gerald’s Game, there’s still something that manages to transcend all of my issues with it. By the end, I am thrilled by the outcome of Danny and Abra’s journey. They have overcome so much that has made me personally care for their final decision. It may be too bombastic and odd at times, but that’s not the only thing to care about when watching a movie. Sometimes all you need is a lot of endearing characters. Doctor Sleep has enough of that, and that’s why I’d put it as one of the better adaptations of recent years, even if it’s a far cry from the recent best IT (2017). You still get great unexpected moments, and that is why King has never gone away. He knows how to make an entertaining yarn.
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