Stephen King's Doctor Sleep

A great adaptation, faithful enough to the book to please its fans, and different enough for it to tie in with the end of Kubrick’s movie. McGregor is excellent as Danny, but the sexy Rebecca Ferguson’s performance as Rose the Hat is just heaven. Much better than in the book. The climax at the hotel, logically different from the book, is a playful variation on the original Shining, with an ending that closes the circle. (15/02/2020)

King's The Shining is quite an interesting long-running phenomenon, now comprising two novels (from 1977 and 2013), both of which have been made into films, the first also as a miniseries, and there's one more TV project to come, apparently called Overlook. So how good is the film version of Doctor Sleep? It’s a decent modern King film, with an excellent McGregor and a declaration of love for the original The Shining. It’s comparable to the new versions of It or Pet Sematary. (31/12/2021)

A difficult to adapt yet incredibly good work by Stephen King. If the screenplay were to strictly follow the structure of the original, half of the running time would be devoted to AA meetings. I therefore understand why Mike Flanagan focused much more on Abra and Rose because their storylines are far more cinematic (albeit not too personal), but poor Danny remains a secondary character. Considering that it necessarily had to follow on the film version of The Shining and less so on the book, the ending is surprisingly strong, more terrifying in terms of its logic, and respectfully faithful to the source material, despite some changes (including the biggest) being frustrating at first. From a story about overcoming one's own shadow, something different has emerged: a horror movie that is not afraid to avoid cheap scares and only uses the atmosphere to pay homage. (15/01/2021)

Doctor Sleep might put you to sleep! Mike Flanagan tries his best, but once again I was not pleased. I find his films terribly uninteresting. This one is a direct sequel to The Shining after 40 years and introduces the main character played by Ewan McGregor (the boy in The Shining) who follows in the footsteps of the True Knot cult who suck the souls out of dead victims. Filmed decently, both Ewan and Rebecca Ferguson, playing the villain, are solid. The music is also good, fans of the first film will be pleased with the many references and the finale is quite intense. But the film is not scary, suspenseful, brutal and certainly not entertaining, I haven't seen such a slow film in the cinema for a long time. I'm personally not a big fan of The Shining either, so this story and mythology doesn't do anything for me and actually doesn't interest me much. I don't want to put it off completely, fans of The Shining will probably enjoy it and IMDB praises it as well, so it's not a dud, more like nothing for me. 55% (01/11/2019)

I figured out the thing had always bothered me subconsciously about The Shining, that basically it is not about that “shining” in the title. In Kubrick’s film, it feels like a mythological element quite inorganically incorporated into an ordinary and simple horror film about people living in a haunted hotel. I bet that nine out of ten people asked to briefly retell The Shining wouldn’t mention that Danny is “special”. Compared to that, Doctor Sleep has a rich mythology set in a universe I would like to return to discover other stories that may be taking place. Warner really failed at selling the film, the trailers left me quite underwhelmed, but in the end, I think this’s been one of the most pleasant horror surprises of this year. And, for the second year in a row, Mike Flanagan has significantly improved the year’s horror balance, clever boy. I like how Doctor Sleep connects to The Shining in a meaningful way, while still being a different film which, with only minor changes, would perfectly work on its own. For a horror film, it’s not afraid to have copious footage, it’s not afraid to use snares or to avoid relying on jump-scares, and nor is it afraid to be nasty and uncompromising in many ways. (14/11/2019)