I'm a bad Stephen King fan. I love him, truly. Hours of my life have been consumed by novels, short stories, and movie adaptations. But I missed this one. I didn't realize Doctor Sleep existed at all until the movie. 2013 he wrote the sequel to the iconic The Shining. I never read the book, I will openly admit that. I read most classics by King. When I was very young. But I saw the feature film first. I didn't know that Stephen King was not a fan of this film adaptation at all. It could be marked down as one of the greatest horror/suspense films of all time. But the writer didn't even enjoy it. Strange. But I suppose when someone adapts your writing to the screen, you lose a bit of creative control. For Doctor Sleep, what I read, was that Stephen King thoroughly enjoyed it. The director, Mike Flanagan, had previously worked with King before on the film adaptation of "Geralds Game". Which I TRULY love. They obviously have built a strong work relationship. Flanagan has directed quite a few of my newer horror favs including Hush, Haunting of Hill House on top of Gerald's Game. But enough about my fandom, and straight to business. Doctor Sleep was way too fucking long. Honestly. I don't understand the trend of extending slow scenes and boring dialogue to make a movie 2.5 hours or more. It's not right. You lose the viewer. In my opinion anyway.
However, we are given some incredible performances. Ewan Mcgregor stars as grown-up Danny from The Shining. Most of the story centers around his life about 20 years later. He is seemingly psychic, he can see people's futures (within limits) and he is able to communicate with people who share his same gift. It is interesting as a concept for sure. However, maybe my ignorance as a fan of The Shining makes this movie seem a little cheesy. The ideas are there, whether they're executed well or not. There is A LOT of scene dragging. I mean I find it hard to go through the story too much because the middle 1.5 hours is quite a mish-mash of "sort of important" but mostly unimportant plot points. My biggest critique will be the ending, however. We revisit the Overlook Hotel. We are reintroduced to iconic scenes throughout the set, including the bar, the hallways, the typewriter, the tree maze, the bloody elevator, etc. It was actually very confusing to figure out whether or not they had purchased and reused footage from the original movie because it was created again quite well. We see old characters again. We hear old lines again. And honestly, I was PRAYING that they would not stick a terrible line in one of the scenes like, "HEREEEE'S DANNY!" (since he is the one holding the axe, etc) They didn't. I am forever thankful. Could have used a Jack Nicholson cameo desperately. But overall it wasn't the worst. Too long, though.
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