Years following the events of “The Shining,” a now-adult Dan Torrance meets a young girl with similar powers as he tries to protect her from a cult known as The True Knot who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.
I was never a fan of “The Shining.” In fact, I was never a fan of Stanley Kubrick. I always felt that he and his movies were overrated and overpraised. He was most certainly a very accomplished and talented filmmaker, I just didn’t like his visual style, subject matters, outrageous perfectionism, and mistreatment of actors. And if you know anything about “The Shining,” then you know he treated Shelley Duvall with the utmost contempt and disdain. He later went on to say he treated her so badly because her character had to gradually realize that her husband, played by Jack Nicholson, was slowly going crazy and she had to become afraid of him over the course of the film and Kubrick kept up his mistreatment of her the whole way through in order to keep her performance consistent. You can even watch Kubrick belittling her in front of the cast and crew in his daughter Vivian Kubrick’s documentary, “The Making of The Shining.” As an independent filmmaker myself for over 30 years, this is absolutely unacceptable behavior from a director who was so revered and held in such high esteem. Even Jack Nicholson said in a documentary called “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures,” that there was a huge double standard when it came to Kubrick treating him with respect but always being so overly critical and scathing of Ms. Duvall.
I never read Stephen King’s book ‘The Shining’ but I do know that even he was disappointed with Kubrick’s big-screen adaptation. A lot of people were. The year it was released, 1980, Kubrick and Duvall were both nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director and Worst Actress, respectively. The movie flopped upon its initial release and opened to mixed reviews but like many other films that underperformed at the box office back then, it found a new life on home video and has since attained cult classic status. Visually, the movie was breathtaking and Nicholson turned in another manic performance but that is about all it had going for it. While I have to give kudos to Shelley Duvall for spending most of the movie afflicted and constantly in tears, her performance was uneven at best and that is what Kubrick got for “directing” her.
With “Doctor Sleep,” writer-director Mike Flanagan continues from the events of “The Shining” by focusing on Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), the son of Nicholson’s Jack Torrance. At the end of “The Shining,” Jack tried to kill Danny in a frozen hedge maze behind the Overlook Hotel but the boy outsmarted him as he had navigated his way through the maze many times before, leaving Jack to freeze to death, unable to escape. Now Danny and his mother Wendy (Alex Essoe) live in Florida. While they try to get on with their lives, Danny is still haunted by the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel, specifically the decomposing woman from room 237. Danny has the ability to see ghosts and one, in particular, Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly), who was killed by Jack in “The Shining,” visits him frequently. He knows Danny is seeing the ghosts and tells him how to construct imaginary boxes in his head where he can lock them away. This works and for the first time in a long time, Danny is able to move on with his life, along with his mother.
In 2011, Danny is a raging alcoholic who fights often and takes all types of drugs to suppress everything to do with his past. The Shining is the name of the gift Danny has, where he has the ability to speak to other people who possess similar gifts using only his mind and he also has the capability to see into the past of any person or building. He moves to a small town in the northeast and tries to start over and thanks to a kind man, Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), he manages to acquire a small apartment and begins to attend AA meetings. He works part-time at a local hospice where he begins to use his shining gift to comfort dying patients and earns the nickname Doctor Sleep. When a young teenage girl named Abra (Kyliegh Curran), reaches out to him with her mind, he is very hesitant to communicate with her because of her age but gradually, they form a friendship, albeit more akin to a pen pal as they never meet but one night, he is physically thrown from his bed and quickly ascertains that something is wrong.
Abra reaches out to him and informs him that a group of people who call themselves True Knot, nomadic psychics who devour the life force, or steam, as they call it, of spiritually-gifted children, have just murdered a young boy named Bradley, who possessed shining abilities. Every time they take a child’s gift and, ultimately, their life, it makes them stronger and they can continue to wander the world for decades and even centuries. Abra is able to get inside the head of True Knot’s leader, Rose (Rebecca Ferguson) and discovers where they buried the body of Bradley but Rose turns Abra’s inquisitive vision back on her and realizes that she is very powerful, and may indeed, be stronger than her. When Rose informs the group that Abra must be killed as she is becoming too powerful, they set out to track her down but Rose’s lover, Crow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon), insists that she stay behind as Abra can look inside her head and would be able to see them coming. Reluctantly, she agrees. With the help of Danny and his friend Billy, they are able to stay one step ahead of the group. After setting up a trap in the forest, a bloody shootout ensues and as Rose watches on helplessly, she depletes the group’s remaining stockpile of steam that they accumulated over the years and sets out to kill both Danny and Abra.
Knowing that Rose is going to be unstoppable, Danny takes Abra and they head into the mountains to the one place he knows they shouldn’t be going…the Overlook Hotel. When Abra inquires about the hotel, Danny tells her that unspeakable evil lies within its walls and for people like them, people who shine, they are a beacon for the ghosts and spirits that dwell inside the old, dilapidated building. When Rose finally arrives, Danny and Abra have a plan set in motion, and as she makes her way inside, little does she realize she is shining brighter and more radiant than anything else that has ever stepped foot inside the hotel, and as she follows Danny and Abra, the hotel comes to life once more, and shows Rose its true power.
“Doctor Sleep” is what “The Shining” should have been, a well-constructed, scary, ghost story. The characters are genuine and director Mike Flanagan pays homage to the first film utilizing the same sort of camera angles and shots Kubrick might have employed if he were still alive and making movies today. “The Shining” is an acquired taste, whereas “Doctor Sleep” is right in your face and makes no apologies for what it is. It is scary, at times brutal with its unflinching violence but it doesn’t brandish this onscreen brutality just for the sake of doing so, the savagery we observe is shown in order to display how True Knot synchronizes with each other and how they survive as a whole. Ewan McGregor shines (pun intended) in the role of Danny Torrance and Kyliegh Curran as his young friend Abra, exudes onscreen chemistry from the first frame to the last. While “The Shining” had almost 40 years to seep into the public’s consciousness, with time, I feel that “Doctor Sleep” will follow suit and will be viewed by many as a superior successor to its less-than-stellar predecessor.
In Theaters Friday, November 8th
