Not a Shining example

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This article was published 09/11/2019 (2201 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This big-budget studio horror movie is a true curiosity.

But decades from now, it’s never going to be considered legendary. The distinction is important.

Doctor Sleep is packaged as a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 landmark The Shining, which starred Jack Nicholson as an alcoholic writer who becomes slowly bewitched by the malevolent spirit of a remote Colorado hotel he has been hired to caretake over the winter. His gradual possession imperils the lives of his wife (Shelley Duvall) and his young, psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd).

Author Stephen King was not a fan of the first film, claiming it was too cold… which may be code for too Kubrick-y. By contrast, he very much approves of the more yeoman-like director Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, based on his own 2013 sequel, which sees the adult Danny (Ewan McGregor) felled by alcoholism like his dad.

The movie is still a sequel to the movie version of The Shining, as opposed to King’s book, which readers may recall (book spoiler alert) saw the destruction of the Overlook Hotel at its climax.

Seeking quiet anonymity, Danny gets off a bus in a small town and finds work as an orderly at a hospice, where his psychic gifts help dying patients ease into a blissful end. He makes a friend in fellow alcoholic Billy (Cliff Curtis), who recognizes a troubled soul when he sees one. It should be a happy ending for a character who has been through literal hell.

But via a long-distance psychic link, Danny soon becomes aware of a child whose gift, a.k.a. “shining,” dwarfs his own. Abra (Kyliegh Curran) enjoys her own “magic” abilities, until they put her on the wavelength of a psychic boy (Jacob Tremblay in a harrowing cameo) who falls victim to an evil cult of supernaturally gifted murderers who call themselves the “True Knot.” Led by the charming, malevolent hippie-gone-bad named Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), this demonic denomination tortures and kills children and consumes their “steam,” a smoky manifestation of their powers.

Rose too learns about Abra via psychic link, and targets her as a potential steam banquet. This forces Danny to intervene in a bid to protect Abra. His strategy eventually takes them to the long-shuttered Overlook Hotel, where he can simultaneously fight these new demons while making peace with his old ones.

That’s the theory anyway.

Curiously, this movie also takes significant liberties with King’s source material. But under Flanagan’s direction, moments of inspiration are few, such as a scene in which Rose does a little astral projecting in a bid to find Abra, a lovely sequence with an enjoyably nasty payoff.

But unlike The Shining, it’s just nothing special. Whatever its faults, Kubrick’s film retains an allure of mystery. A 2012 feature documentary — titled Room 237 — was made just riffing on the theories that popped up about Kubrick’s film, including the notion that it was really about the genocide of indigenous peoples, or that it was a secret confession by Kubrick to having personally faked the moon landing.

Doctor Sleep is less likely to fire the imagination. At times, it looks like just another 21st-century superhero movie along the lines of The X-Men, with bad psychics pitted against good psychics.

By the time people start showing up at the abandoned Overlook, the wheels well and truly fall off the thing. Reproductions of The Shining’s miscellaneous spirits just register as cheesy.

Too bad. McGregor brings his disarming sincerity to the role of Danny, and Ferguson fully commits to the wickedness of her character.

Doctor Sleep relies on the ghosts of Kubrick’s movie and comes up as insubstantial as its spectres.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing