Some films are magic. Some films just work for you and stick with you and you return to them time and time again, revelling in what that magic is.
Mike Flanagan’s 2019 film Doctor Sleep is magic.
Released in November 2019, Doctor Sleep manages to be many things all at once, and all of them work wonderfully for me. Based on Stephen King’s 2013 novel, itself a sequel to his 1977 classic The Shining, Doctor Sleep is both an adaptation of King’s work and a sequel to another entity, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cinematic version of The Shining. It gets a little confusing, considering that Kubrick’s film bares little resemblance to King’s original novel, a fact that always irked the author. Nonetheless, in the hands of director Mike Flanagan, who also wrote the screenplay to Doctor Sleep (and also served as its editor), the film works in every way, honouring its source material while also aligning itself with what many consider to be the greatest horror movie ever made (no matter where Indie Wire placed it on its recent list of great horror films).
In Doctor Sleep, we are reunited with Dan Torrance (Ewen McGregor), all grown up but still traumatized by his experiences at The Overlook Hotel. Early on in the film, we see Dan as a raging alcoholic, a connection to his long dead father Jack. That relationship runs through Doctor Sleep, hovering over the character as he cleans himself up and sets about helping Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a young girl who shines much like Dan did, and who has attracted the attention of The True Knot, a caravan of psychic soul suckers who feed off what they call “steam,” the pain and fear of their victims. The group is led by Rose The Hat (a magnificently alluring Rebecca Ferguson), who is determined to find and harvest Abra’s shine.
As a long time, massive Stephen King fan, I can tell you truthfully that I wasn’t remotely impressed with Doctor Sleep when I first read the book upon its release, and I didn’t care for it too much more when I reread it again before the movie arrived in theatres. While it was nice to revisit the character of Dan Torrance and that world, my feelings at the time were that not much really happened in the book. While there was certainly character development for Dan, the story itself meandered along, with not much in the way of drama. In theory, it seemed like a book difficult to adapt,
Amazingly, what Mike Flanagan did as a writer, editor, and director was take a lesser Stephen King-book and turn it into one of the best cinematic adaptations of his work. This is especially true of Flanagan’s director’s cut, my go-to version. The movie runs 3 hours long, yet never meanders like the novel. Rather, it takes its time, allowing us to get to know all of its characters while also revisiting the events at The Overlook Hotel that shaped Dan Torrance.
The moments in Doctor Sleep where we reunite with a young Danny, his mother Wendy, and Dick Halloran are done masterfully, thanks in no small part to the spot-on casting of Roger Dale Floyd, Alex Essoe, and Carl Lumbly, respectively. These actors are given the unenviable job of recalling characters and performers etched in cinema history, and they manage to deliver. Yet, while the familiar is welcome, the true strength of Doctor Sleep lays not in the past, but in the character moments of the film’s current.
Ewen McGregor’s Dan Torrance has a fully developed arc, from the raging alcoholic we first meet to the man who takes stalk of himself to the recovering member of AA who takes pride is eight years of sobriety and standing tall in a moment his father would also have experienced. In my recent rewatch of Doctor Sleep, I found myself genuinely moved and welling up by McGregor’s performance, especially when he approaches his downstairs neighbour Billy (Cliff Curtis) and tearfully admits he needs help. Dan’s battle for sobriety throughout the film is even more effective knowing that Mike Flanagan is a recovering alcoholic who has publicly shared that aspect of his life. The artist clearly knows of which he directs.
Doctor Sleep is also about fathers and sons and that oft tenuous bond between them. As someone recently estranged from my own father for various reasons (none of which include anyone wielding an axe, thankfully), watching Dan grapple with the ghost of Jack Torrance took on a new level for me. The profound moment when Dan is face to face with Jack (Henry Thomas) at The Overlook Hotel is an original scene written for the film by Flanagan, and was and remains profoundly moving.
Doctor Sleep is in many ways about the ghosts that haunt us; its lack of commercial success at the time of release certainly haunts its director, who recently recalled sitting in an empty Los Angeles theatre the weekend of its release. The gift of time and streaming has certainly done much in raising the clout and awareness of Doctor Sleep, though, not to mention the director’s cut which turns an excellent film into what I’d consider a masterwork. Is it the equal to Kubrick’s The Shining? Well, I won’t go that far, because you’re talking about arguably the greatest horror film ever made, at least in my book. Kubrick’s film is also a different sort of movie, one that succeeds and endures because of the constant feeling of dread that emanates from it. Doctor Sleep, in my mind, is less about its horror roots and much more about its characters. While it has its moments of frights, what makes it endure is its heart and soul and how one can see themselves within it.
That’s the magic of Doctor Sleep.