Rating of
3/4
Dr. Sleep - Review
Matthew Brady - wrote on 11/12/19
“Hi there”
Hello there...
Mike Flanagan has some of the biggest balls in the horror industry. I mean just look at his filmography so far.
He took one of the worst horror movies in recent memory ‘Ouija’ and said: “yeah, I wanna make a sequel to that”, with ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ and somehow made it less terrible. How about ‘Haunting of Hill House’ where he’s going to direct every episode of a television series that has to weave two narratives together at once over ten episodes...and again he somehow made it work. And now this guy is gonna make a sequel to one of the most revered horror movies of all time with ‘Doctor Sleep’...the son of b**ch did it again!
I think Flanagan deserves more credit as a director rather than people bitching that his movies “ain't scary enough an-” blah blah blah shut the hell up.
‘Doctor Sleep’ was a complete surprise for all the right reasons. At first I wasn’t sure if the movie would hook me, because it takes awhile for it to get going, but slowly I got invested in the story and the characters. There have been four Stephen King movie adaptions this year: ‘Pet Sematary’, ‘IT Chapter Two’, ‘In The Tall Grass’, and now this movie. This is by far the best out of them all.
The runtime is 152 minutes long and I can safely say that the movie is 85% it’s own thing, because it doesn't just rely on nostalgia to tell their story and it’s only the last act where things start to play on nostalgia when the characters return to the Overlook Hotel. The nostalgia being the 80’s horror classic of course. It’s either that or 97 TV mini-series. Who’s got fond memories for that piece of sh*t? So with this being both a sequel to Kubrick's movie and King’s original novel; a clash of visions coming together with Flanagan trying to put this together, while also applying his own vision into the mix.
Now that’s hard.
The part that got me invested in the story was the scene between Danny and a elderly patient who’s on their death bed. Danny comforts them as their peacefully past away, without dying alone. It’s a beautiful and heartfelt scene that you would never expect to see in a supernatural horror movie.
Ewan Mcgregor was fantastic as an alcoholic grown-up Danny Torrance. Nicholson's presence was felt through out the movie as adult Danny fears he might follow in his fathers footsteps. There’s a scene where Danny gives a talk at a rehab group and as doing so he reflects deeply on everything that happened to him in the past, while the camera is locked on Ewan’s face. Not only from his childhood, but everything afterwards and drowning out the trauma through drinking - something that us as the audience don’t see. I thought he was excellent. He absolutely “shines” as the character...and am not sorry for that pun.
I loved how fleshed out the villains were, which surprised me the most about the movie. They are like vampires, but instead of feasting on blood, it’s “the shining” they crave for a expanded life. Casual and charming, and yet wickedly evil. There’s a particularly scene that was so difficult to watch and really got under my skin. However you do get to see them interreacting with each other in normal conversations as they casually go on with the day and work as a group. Rose the Hat sticks out from the rest as a sinister and endearing villian played marvelously by Rebecca Ferguson.
Mike Flanagan dose a great job on balancing both Kubrick’s and King’s version respectfully, but also manages to put his visual spin in. The one thing that hasn’t been mention yet is how great he is with child actors as he always gets the best performance out of them, especially Jacob Tremblay and Kyliegh Curran who was so convincing in the roles it was scary.
The movie looks stunning with the use of colors adding to the overall tone and helps creates the horror atmosphere. Same thing with the score that while it takes samples from Kubrick’s movie, but not to say it doesn’t have it’s own.
For issues:
There was a couple of callbacks that was a little on the noise, usually through references. As I said early the movie takes a while to find it’s footing and you couldn’t help but draw comparisons. There were a few questionable and almost silly lines that King himself would inject into his work for humor, but here, with tone in mind, just took the fear out of it.
Overall rating: “Eat well and live long.”
