The waiver must wait, because tonight I was witness to a preview of Dr. Sleep. I made the mistake of reading the King novel only days before the movie was released. I say mistake, because I think it hindered my joy in ways that others were able to avoid. Dr. Sleep is a pantomime of The Shining. It attempts to be an answer whereas no question was ever asked, and in the end comes off as an attempt to pick up the torch from Kubrick while both paying respect to the man and paying respect to Stephen King. It is unclear whether the director is entirely successful in either endeavor.
Dr. Sleep follows the story of Danny ‘Doc’ Torrance as he grows into a man who hides from his shine through the glaze of alcoholism. Torrance is contacted astrally by a young girl who has a powerful shine of her own. Over the course of her young life she runs into trouble she cannot handle and through his assistance she is able to learn about herself and where her troubles come from.
This is the book version now. In that version there is an interesting twist at the end that allows everything to make a strange sort of sense. Of course this is also Stephen King, so the book version involves dozens of characters who are both interesting and integral to the story. Movies do not operate under the same time constraints. As a result many of the characters are compressed down into one or two who act to serve the same purpose. Unfortunately this means that a lot of the story and characterization is also compressed to the point where it seems less an ode to Kubrick than Kubrick writ small.
The film works with the language and wishes of King in many ways and feels like it is trying to right the plot changes of the original Kubrick work. It succeeds in some ways but makes changes to the new text that are not only unnecessary but steal some of the fundamental character story for all of the main players. Worst of all, the parents and a certain pediatrician become merely a footnote in this tale with little to no impact on the story.
It was a great attempt at bringing back the Kubrick vibe. There are Dark Tower moments throughout and often Kubrick shots are mirrored to moor us to that past narrative and to show how the now is not so different. It was enjoyable, but it didn’t make me want to see it twice.