Doctor Sleep (2019) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 18

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Yeah we all shine on!

Doctor Sleep has a lot to live up to being a sequel not only to the 1980 version of The Shining, but also the original novel by Stephen King. How does it fare?

Before Viewing

The trailer makes it clear that this is the sequel to The Shining (one of the scariest films ever), based on the Stephen King novel. For some foolhardy reason, an adult Danny Torrence returns to the Overlook Hotel, and bad things happen. There are shots that look right out of the original. This time he must help a young girl who has the gift of the shining. Expectations for this movie are set super high, so hang a do not disturb sign on the door, draw a warm bath, and let’s begin.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

It’s 1980 In Cedar Key, Florida, and a young girl named Violet (Violet McGraw) is killed and consumed by Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her compatriots. Nearby Danny Torrence (Roger Dale Floyd) and his mother Wendy (Alex Essoe) try to put the events of the Overlook Hotel behind them. Danny still speaks with the ghost of Dick Halloran (Carl Lumbly) using his “shining” but otherwise locks up his demons in little boxes in his mind. In 2011 Danny, now “Dan,” is an alcoholic living under a bridge in New Jersey. One day he decides to run away from his life and hops a bus to New Hampshire.

Elsewhere in New Hampshire, a young Abra Stone (Dakota Hickman) celebrates her 5th birthday demonstrating her powers to do “real magic.” His parents are shocked by what they see. In Long Island, NY, 15 year old Andi (Emily Alyn Lind) preys on pedophiles using her powers of suggestion (called “pushing”) to rob and scar them. She is offered a position in the True Knot, Rose’s group. What is tied, shall never be untied. In Frazier, NH, Dan meets Billy (Cliff Curtis), a helpful soul, and joins Alcoholics Anonymous, gets an apartment, and a job at a hospice. A cat at the facility knows when residents are about to die and Dan is able to help them cross over. He gets the nickname ‘Doctor Sleep.’

Eight years later Dan has been sober since moving to New Hampshire. He is helping people and becoming a member of the community. Abra (Kyliegh Curran) is now 13 and using her powers sparingly, but communicates with Dan–feeling his presence nearby. The True Knot is having a hard time as there is less “steam” in the world–the substance they siphon from people that “shine,” causing them to continue to seek out special people in the world to feed on. They find a young baseball player in Iowa which they abducted, torture and kill for his “steam.” Abra feels this murder from across the country, and transmits the message to Dan as a large cracked “MURDER” appears on his wall. Rose also senses Abra and believes they finally found their great white whale.

Abra decides to use her powers to locate Dan, who tells her that messing with these people is dangerous. He’s scared to take a stand and wants to keep his head down, telling Abra to do the same. Later Dick visits Dan again after eight years and reminds him that Abra needs him, they way that young Danny needed Dick to help him. Rose homes in on where Abra lives using her powers to get into the younger girl’s head, but Abra was ready for her and sets a trap injuring Rose. Abra is excited that she messed with these people, but Dan is now scared for both of them. He convinces Billy to take a trip to Iowa with him to exhume the body of the boy and his baseball glove, hoping it will help Abra track another member of the Knot.

When they return to New Hampshire Abra shows her Dad what she can do to convince him that this is not just crazy nonsense. Billy, Dan, and Abra set up a trap for the members of the Knot coming across the country for her. Six of them, including Andi, come for her in the woods, but Abra is not really there. Dan and Billy shoot all six members, but as she dies, Andi uses her powers to make Billy shoot himself. Abra is grabbed, at home, by the seventh member, Crow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon). He drugs her, kills her Dad, and starts heading back to rendezvous with Rose. Dan uses his “shining” to connect with Abra, taking over her body, and crashing the car which kills Crow Daddy. Dan then picks up Abra and they head for Colorado.

They arrive at the dilapidated Overlook Hotel, hoping Rose will follow them here and that the ghosts will be just as dangerous to her as they are to Dan and Abra. Dan “wakes up” the hotel, which includes a lengthy conversation with a bartender that looks very much like his father, Jack Torrence (Henry Thomas). When Rose arrives they put her into Dan’s mind as he tries to capture her in one of his mind boxes, but she expels them. Dan unleashes the ghosts of his mind boxes which consume Rose and come after him. Possessed by the hotel, Dan comes for Abra with an axe, in a similar way to how his Dad came after him 39 years ago. But Abra smiles, since she knows Dan previously set the boiler to explode. She makes it out safely and leaves Dan to guard her back as the hotel burns to the ground. Later, at home, she talks with Dan’s spirit, who no longer wants her to shy away from her gift. He wants her to stand!

“Our beliefs don’t make us better people. Our actions make us better people.” – Dan Torrence

Hells Bells Margaret! A sequel to The Shining? That doesn’t seem like a good idea. But that’s what Doctor Sleep is, and I think it lives up to the legacy of the previous film. Even though this is based on the 2013 novel by Stephen King, it still needs to be able to stand on its own. There are many people that are fans of King’s book of “The Shining,” which is not the same as the Stanley Kubrick film version (King included). But since this film was made as a sequel to that 1980 film, it needed to accept that the events of the film are the true events that happened. I am one of those fans that needed to be convinced that this was a worthwhile endeavor.

Directed by Mike Flanagan, who is one of my new favorite horror creators (having made the excellent films Oculus and Hush which I love, and is the showrunner, writer, and director for the Netflix Haunting of Hill House and Haunting of Bly House series), Doctor Sleep takes the themes and elements from The Shining and uses them to great effect. Like George Lucas talks about with his Star Wars saga, the inclusion of similar scenes with different outcomes are like music with different refrains. Flanigan uses many visual homages to the original film (such as the Doctor’s office being a spot-on recreation of Mr. Ullman’s office from The Shining). It was great to see the homages play out, and not just as fan service, but as an integral part of the story.

It’s difficult to talk about this sequel and not talk about the original film. In short, The Shining is about addiction and destructive tendencies wrapped up in a psychological horror & ghost story. Doctor Sleep covers a number of themes including sobriety, legacy and duty. It also serves to link the characters and the events of these stories with the larger Stephen King universe of characters from The Stand, The Dark Tower, and Castle Rock. But where The Shining presents itself as a psychologically tragic horror film, with its share of scares and disturbing imagery, Doctor Sleep is more of a thoughtful horror film which, dare I say, has an actual upbeat ending.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still disturbing moments here. Especially the torture and murder of the young baseball player (played excellently by Jacob Tremblay, the young actor from both Room (2015) and Wonder (2017)). The Knot are portrayed as a cross between psychic vampires and the Manson clan. But overall the threats toward Abra are not completely scary due to her strong belief in herself. She is so confident in her abilities, even when Dan is not, so the audience feels like she may have a better handle on the powers than he does. She is also immeasurably more powerful than Danny ever was. Rose remarks that she has never felt power like this before. The end of the film, while tragic from the journey, is uplifting and positive in a way that no other horror movie in recent memory has been.

The biggest draw for the film is Dan’s story, from frightened child, to alcoholic, to recovery and redemption. When he gets his 8-year chip and stands before the group at AA, he mentions that he never got to know his dad (he was 5 during the events of the original film), but when he hit rock bottom with his drinking, he felt a connection to Jack that warmed him. This urge to connect is repeated in the final act when Dan must submit to the same temptation, heck the same scene, as Jack had in The Shining. The bartender offers him a drink, telling him that his credit is good. But Dan is able to hold onto his sobriety and navigate a tense moment that is not scary–in the monster sort of way–but scary in the losing oneself moment. Dan sees the slippery slope of the bartenders offer. “Man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, and then the drink takes a man.” Extremely poetic.

It’s also amazing to see the actors that they cast to portray younger versions of the characters. I won’t say that they are spot on likenesses, but the mannerisms and spirit of young Danny, Wendy, Dick, and of course Jack, all come through strongly. Henry Thomas (Elliott from E.T., by the way) is not doing a Jack Nicholson impression. He is channeling his inner Jack Torrence and it’s chilling as hell. If you are a fan of the 1980 Kubrick version, I think there’s a lot here for you to enjoy. It surpassed all my concerns and crafted a really entertaining and thought provoking film.

Assorted Musings

• A number of the actors have appeared in other horror projects including a number of Mike Falangan’s productions such as Gerald’s Game and The Haunting of Hill House. Here’s some of the other notable appearances
  • Carel Struycken played Lurch in the Addams Family films from the 90s
  • Rebecca Fergusen was in the 2017 film Life about astronauts that find a strange new life form.
  • Zahn McClarnon was an Indian scout called the Professor in Bone Tomahawk.
  • Emily Alyn Lind was in the recent Netflix films The Babysitter and The Babysitter: Killer Queen.
  • Jocelin Donahue (Abra’s mother) was in Insidious: Chapter 2 and the recently reviewed Holidays.
  • Henry Thomas was also in Ouija: Origin of Evil.
• The sets of the Overlook Hotel were crafted from the original plans from the Kubrick film. Fans will be hard pressed to find differences (even with the mirror from Oculus being included just outside the Gold Room).
• After the hard sell from the Bartender to Dan, Jack then leaves him with the following quote from AA, to “you accept the things you cannot change.”
• The subject of mind palaces (or boxes to categorize things in your mind) was featured in the previous King story Dreamcatcher, as well as the BBC Sherlock series.