Some movies fare better on subsequent viewings and others not so much. 2019’s Doctor Sleep is an example of the latter, a picture I was pleasantly surprised by in my first viewing. Unfortunately, a second viewing a couple of years later revealed its many shortcomings.
My original astonishment was because this film shouldn’t have worked in the first place. Hell, it shouldn’t even exist. Here we have an unnecessary sequel to The Shining, which is firmly lodged in the public consciousness as both book and movie.
Another potential strike against it is the main threat and plot driver is an element which wasn’t in the first installment, and that is the family of “psychic vampires” Even having seen this picture twice, I still roll my eyes as I type those words.
This group is called The True Knot and they are led by Rebecca Ferguson’s Rose the Hat, so we also have at least one character name that beggars belief. They travel in an RV fleet, devouring the power (or “steam”, in their parlance) of those who have the shine the young boy demonstrated in the earlier work. That boy has grown into Ewan McGregor, who now finds himself protecting a young girl (Kyleigh Curran) with the same ability, though to far greater levels.
We will first see Curran a few years younger, as played by Dakota Hickman. In addition to the shine, she apparently has telekinesis, as she covers the kitchen ceiling with spoons, using only her mind. Her parents are terrified, and I suspect they think she might be Uri Geller. Later, she will tell McGregor she found him by using a kind of GPS in her head, which made me wonder whether it repeatedly took her on pointless shortcuts before directing her to talk off a cliff, like how GPS has done to some people in real life.
The Knot apparently get more steam from a victim with increased pain, as demonstrated in a terrifying sequence where they torture a young boy to death. The kids asks if they’re going to hurt him and Ferguson hungrily replies, “Yesss…” If these thing feed on pain, then I can only assume they ate well while Freddy Got Fingered was in cinemas.
There are some elements of the Knot’s operation that had me asking questions later. I’m especially confused by the device they use to capture the steam so they can feed on it in small increments later. These things are like a combination bomb and thermos and their standardized construction suggests mass production. Who manufactures these things? How do they know where to buy them? Is there an on-line retailer like “Psychic Vampire Supply”? And then there’s the way they consume the steam from these things, just opening it up and letting the vapor waft into the open. Seem to me that, if this is so valuable, then I’m wondering why they don’t just put it in plastic bags and huff it.
We’ll get a peek into their history and operation when they induct a new member into their ranks. Emily Alyn Lind is that new inductee, a young woman who can “push” others to do her will. One of the lines that clicked for me in both viewings is when Ferguson tells Lind that, while she can’t offer eternal life, it can be greatly prolonged and the aging process will be remarkably slowed: “Gravity hasn’t even noticed you. Not at 15.” Lind agrees to her invitation to have “springtime forever”. No surprise the conversion process is painful and actually involves Lind dying. Afterwards, she asks if she’s still human, to which Ferguson replies, “Do you care?”
For most of the film, I felt Ferguson was this movie’s greatest asset, until she is starts playing the role too broadly. That happens around the same time the dialogue becomes less impressive and more typical of the genre. One element of her character I found interesting is she is basically a hippy, usually meditating on top of her RV while surrounded by candles. She’s doing that to find the potential victims with the most shine, but I still think her meditating at all is proof hippies are evil. There’s also a moment which amused me, where she is doing something so mundane as grocery shopping. My money is on that retailer is either Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.
McGregor fares pretty well. His character has quite an arc. He starts as an alcoholic, so strung out at the beginning that the first see him waking up in confused and vomiting. It’s because he is starting to remember what a monster he had been the night before, when I thought it was because he suddenly remembered he was in those Star Wars prequels.
In flashbacks, the young Danny who was played by Danny Lloyd in the first film is played by Roger Dale Floyd this time around. That is representative of an interesting approach taken by the filmmakers. Instead of reusing footage from the original film, it uses new actors for roles such as those originated by Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall and Scatman Crothers. These characters will also have new material beyond what was in The Shining. None of the characters may really look like their counterparts, but each is played by an actor with a similar voice and mannerisms to those. I’m glad they went this route instead of some horrible effect like de-aging, or full-on recreation, through CGI.
Alas, those characters are here because the third act will take place at the infamous Overlook Hotel. Curran seems confused by why McGregor is taking her to Colorado, and the obvious answer is because the demands of fan service mean we have to return to the site of the first film and see many of the same elements again. None of this is scary to see again, let alone in a different context. Since I watched this picture as the director’s cut both times, I don’t know how much of this material was in the theatrical version, but I suspect most of the Overlook material was there.
This material is also wearying. When the elevators open to discharge a great quantity of blood, even Ferguson simply looks bemused, like “Oh, is that all you’ve got?” That would be an apt assessment of Doctor Sleep on this, my second viewing. I now realize being a ghost must be like being an executive tasked with making a follow-up to a beloved property, with fans demanding you go through all the same motions again, just like ghosts having their do the same routines for all eternity.
Dir: Mike Flanagan
Starring Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyleigh Curran
Watched on blu-ray