Dr. Sleep is a Bright Light in The Shining Universe
Just when we thought the 2019 horror movie season was over, the fourth Stephen King film adaptation of the year was dropped on a willing audience. I was immediately on record with a 5-skull rating for this film and full disclosure – most people I have talked to disagree with my perfect score. But stay with me.
Dr. Sleep is the sequel to The Shining and there begins the debate. The sequel to which Shining?
Published in 1977, The Shining is Stephen King’s third novel. I think about that in retrospect. Arguably King’s best work was written at the beginning of his career. I read my mother’s paperback hand-me-down while working my high school job at the dry cleaner. It was a pretty quiet place on Saturdays and evenings so I had plenty of time to do homework and read. The shop was especially quiet in the late fall and winter when darkness came early. This was the backdrop against which I read The Shining, my first Stephen King story, and it terrified me. I was immediately hooked; I read every King novel I could get my hands on.
I saw the Kubrick adaptation of The Shining as soon as the film opened in 1980. I hated it. The ending was awful, Shelly Duvall sucked in her role as Wendy Torrance, and how dare they replace the topiary animals that were so frightening in the book with a boring maze? By the time Jack freezes to death in a petered out finale, I felt violated. It would take years and another King film adaption before I got over it.
I tracked down Stephen King’s version of The Shining about ten years after it was released. I didn’t even know it existed until I saw an interview he gave on a Sunday morning talk show. King made no secret about his hatred for Kubrick’s adaptation and in fact, he was so public and prolific with his criticism that Kubrick sold him back the rights if he would just shut the hell up. King’s made-for-television version was released on 1997 and is true to the novel. Steven Weber is no Jack Nicholson but he actually plays a pretty good Jack Torrance. Rebecca DeMornay is a far superior Wendy Torrance, and the predatory topiaries and explosive ending are intact.
The problem is, King’s version just isn’t very scary. The story is there almost scene for scene and word for word. But it lacked atmosphere. For years I vacillated between which version I thought was better – the scary one with the bad ending or the faithful one with a Hallmark epilogue. Both were deficient.
Dr. Sleep was published in 2013 – 36 years after its prequel. I was off Stephen King novels by then, mostly due to the long, dry spell when I didn’t read anything that wasn’t likely to be on a college exam. By the time I got back to reading for fun, I had missed any hype surrounding the novel so I knew nothing of its roots when I added Dr. Sleep to my 2019 horror movie preview.
A lot of critics were . . . critical . . . of a film they said was trying too hard to please everybody. I didn’t see it that way. I had read both books and seen both films so maybe if I hadn’t, I would feel differently. I think you need to have all of that background to understand why Dr. Sleep the movie is perfect just the way it is. Imagine that you are Mike Flanagan and you have an impressive resume that includes creator of the very successful Haunting of Hill House, writer and director of Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Hush, Gerald’s Game, Before I Wake and Absentia. And you are hired to direct the sequel to The Shining which has an audience that is split between fans of the book and fans of the Kubrick film. Your job is to satisfy both. Dr. Sleep, the novel, is a sequel to The Shining, the novel but most people are familiar with Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining so Flanagan had to convince Stephen King to make the film adaptation of Dr. Sleep a sequel to the movie he despised.
I was a little worried when I got to the movie’s first real deviation from the book. And then there was another little deviation, and then another. Followed by a building excitement when I realized the reconciliation of all of the stories that was taking place. In the end, the movie honored The Shining as a novel, The Shining as a successful Kubrick film, and Dr. Sleep as a brilliant sequel to the original story and the popular movie.
If you have read the novel, expect some deviations in the film and embrace the freedom that comes with knowing that when a film is identical to the book on which it is based, it can be pretty boring. Sometimes changes have to be made in order to tell the same story in a different media and preserve the atmosphere.
This movie is chock full of Easter eggs that I won’t go into so as to avoid spoilers. I will invite you to track down the Lasser glass in this movie. Flanagan has snuck this creepy good luck charm into all of his horror films since Oculus and I am hoping that he uses it when he is asked to direct a remake of Salem’s Lot. That is one terrifying vampire story that needs to be done right on film. Flanagan was born in Salem so the expectation seems more than fair and I’m willing to get the rumor started.
Read the books, watch all of the movies, enjoy the brilliant performance by Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat, and I’m sure you will see why this film deserves my 5-skull rating.