DOCTOR SLEEP (2019) ★ ★ ★ ★

As Halloween nears, I can't think of a better movie to review than "Doctor Sleep." It's the 2019 sequel to "The Shining" (1980), and it accomplishes something I didn't think was possible. However, there are two versions of this movie that differ from each other a bit, namely in how much screen time the cool Kubrick stuff gets at the end, so if you're a cinephile like me and want your money's worth, go for the Director's Cut. It's about a half hour longer, and it's a bit better than the theatrical release because it further fleshes out the story's main themes, and does them in a very specific (and special) setting.

The Theatrical Cut is good though, still pretty long (152 minutes), and I think it flows well. I found it to be a worthy edit, and it reminded me that Kubrick's story also had two edits, one long and one short. In "Doctor Sleep," Ewan McGregor plays an adult Danny Torrance, a man haunted by the Overlook Hotel, despite having found a way of dealing with its phantoms (let's just say he compartmentalizes). Danny has a little of his father's irresponsible boozer in him, although this behavior has a purpose: it stifles his ability to Shine. Nobody has ever elucidated exactly what The Shining is. Stephen King describes it as an extra-sensory perception. In Kubrick's version, Dick Hallorann, the hotel cook, likens it the mind's way of sensing what happened in a place previously, like how a nose smells burnt toast. "Doctor Sleep" offers more clues by showing that Danny can do more than just communicate with his mind. Danny's Shine is shared by a teenage girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), and both Danny and Abra can also use their Shining to invade vulnerable minds and rifle through people's memories. 

Abra does that very thing to Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), the psychic leader of the True Knot cult. Rose's schtick is pretty grisly: she and her followers torture and kill people who can Shine, and then feed on something called "steam," which emanates from their bodies as they die. This vampire-like feeding imbues them with indefinite lifespans. It's isn't clear how long Rose and her cadre have been doing this, but when their oldest member finally perishes, she comforts him by vaguely recounting the many empires he has lived through. She takes it personally when Abra invades her mind, although she asked for it by attempting to invade Abra's first. Their psychic interaction makes Abra a mark for True Knot; if they can kill someone with her degree of power, she'll yield an immense amount of "steam." Meanwhile Danny takes a job as a hospice orderly in a small New Hampshire town, and begins to heal his self-inflicted wounds of alcoholism and debauchery by comforting dying patients, who nickname him "Doctor Sleep." 

There are many interesting dynamics at play in this movie, not only on the material level of characters and plot, but on the additional plane of how characters' minds convincingly drive the story's narrative. By the end of the first hour, it's clear that Danny and Abra are inextricably linked to each other by The Shining, and the True Knot cult is a compelling device for bringing them together in person. There's also a bevy of good supporting actors who give sound performances, including Carl Lumbly (Cagney & Lacey) as the spirit of Dick Hallorann, who has become Danny's Obi-Wan Kenobi, Bruce Greenwood as an AA leader and Danny's boss at hospice, Alex Essoe as a young Wendy Torrance (she looks and sounds a little like Shelley Duvall), Emily Alyn Lind as Snakebite Andi, a teenage girl recruited into True Knot, and Zahn McClarnon as Crow Daddy, Rose the Hat's lover and the cult's strongman. 

My one criticism of "Doctor Sleep" is that it never fully realizes an explanation for why The Overlook Hotel is such a malevolent force. Stanley Kubrick so wildly deviated from Stephen King's novel that the author condemned "The Shining" as a personal affront, which led to his endorsement of a more faithful television miniseries in the nineties (King wrote the teleplay). But Kubrick was forgiven by audiences because he made the hotel a central character that threw the lives of its human visitors into utter madness. There are "partygoers" whose phantoms appear in the final act, but why do they return? Who exactly was Charles Grady? Who was Lloyd? Who was the woman in Room 237? These burning questions are never answered. 

This is exacerbated by the fact that director Mike Flanagan brings three of his main characters all the way back to the Overlook Hotel - and I mean all the way back to it - which got my hopes up. That said, I found Flanagan's technical achievement in the last half hour to be absolutely astonishing, and unlike anything I've ever experienced before. He went to inconceivable lengths to breathe new life into Kubrick's vision of the Overlook, and in an era when most people resort to CGI imagery and wild special effects, his dedication to realism and accuracy brought me to tears of happiness. For that, and that alone, I recommend that true Kubrick fans see the Director's Cut of this one. 

                                                                                                                                      --- Bill Fontaine