Movie Review: Rise and Shine for Stephen King's "Doctor Sleep"

There's a lot to love in this sequel to The Shining , but it lives in the shadow of the original.

The first thing you need to know about Doctor Sleep is that it’s not really very scary.

That may not sound, well, good, given its lineage, as Stephen King’s sequel to his novel The Shining.

But trust me, going in with that knowledge will help you acclimatise to its low fright factor, and better appreciate the dark fantasy of director Mike Flanagan’s handsomely polished adaptation.

The other thing you need to know is that Doctor Sleep, as a book and now a movie, is not like The Shining at all. While The Shining was a cloistered and claustrophobic slow-burn centering on a family of three in a haunted hotel, Doctor Sleep is an ensemble flick set across multiple state lines. Its villains are literally caravaners. That’s not a joke and yet the funniest thing I’ll write in this review.

And the third thing you need to know is what the bloody thing is about. It begins with the aftermath of 1980's The Shining, in which alcoholic caretaker Jack Torrance was driven mad by isolation at the snowed-in Overlook Hotel, host to an array of nefarious ghosts stuck within its walls. Though Jack didn’t make it out alive, his wife Wendy and telepathic son Danny managed to escape. Thirty years later, adult Danny (Ewan McGregor) is an alcoholic too, wrestling with past trauma and trying to keep his gift— 'the shining'—quiet. He lets himself use the shine only at his job as an orderly at a hospice, where he helps usher guests to the afterlife. That’s why they’ve nicknamed him Doctor Sleep.

Flanagan’s film is never better than in its evocative first act, as McGregor’s tormented Danny tries to find meaning in a power that had previously only brought him pain (and collected a few ghosts of its own). It’s matched by a scintillating introduction to the aforementioned caravaners led by Rebecca Ferguson’s shine-eating nomad Rose the Hat. Ageless and conscienceless, she leads a crew of carnies across America in RVs, seeking out and murdering children to eat their "steam" (or 'shine'). She also wears a tophat for reasons not articulated. Hey, they don’t call her Rose the Explainer.

Ferguson, best known as the inscrutable Ilsa Faust in the Mission: Impossible series, deliciously chews the scenery here, introducing herself at each turn with a creepy-crawly "well hi there" that’d make Pennywise grin (I mean, grin bigger than usual). Her character tunes into a young girl named Abra (played by the exceptionally impressive Kyliegh Curran), a big-time shiner who calls on Danny for help against Rose and company, including the sinewy Crow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon) and venomous Andi (Emily Alyn Lind).

The performers keep us compelled while the screenplay, also by Flanagan, builds to its inevitable showdown. The scares aren’t big, but there’s drama to be found and artistry to be appreciated. And Flanagan works in some gore, especially at the climax of Rose’s astral projection into Abra’s bedroom, leading to the grisliest degloving I’ve seen since Gerald’s Game (another King text directed by Flanagan… these dudes clearly have a type.)

Readers of both novels should be warned, from that point on, this isn’t Doctor Sleep as they may have known it since its publication in 2013. It has become a joke how King adaptations attempt to right the wrongs of his endings, but this one tries to fix Stanley Kubrick’s alteration of The Shining’s finale, and that’s one stitch that didn’t need unpicking. So now, in its drastically altered third act, we return to the Overlook Hotel, which is what you think you may want, but it ain’t.

It’s at the Overlook that the disparity between the original and its long-awaited sequel is most severe. Doctor Sleep was never gonna compete with Kubrick’s classic; it was given an out by the book in that it was truly its own completely different thing. The feature still succeeds as a complementary tale of alcoholism, sobriety and the curse of carrying "the gene". However, Flanagan’s take nonetheless finds itself flailing to replicate its predecessor. At one point, in desperate search of a jump scare, he reshoots an iconic scene from The Shining and inserts it for a sudden jolt. Er, can we do that now? In that case, I look forward to It: Part 3 where the grown-up Losers Club just remember Parts 1 and 2 again.

3.5/5

Doctor Sleep arrives in Australian cinemas 7 November. Rated MA for strong horror themes and violence.

Header Image: Warner Bros. Pictures