Flanagan needed more Kubrick… Or perhaps he needed less? Doctor Sleep (2019), although a well-executed film filled with ample nostalgia and some sturdy acting, suffered at the hands of its indecision. This is a film caught in the crosshairs between wishing to pay homage to a behemoth 1980s horror classic directed by a world-renowned director and embarking on its own contemporary, renewed horror trajectory in order to fulfil modern-day cinematographic and narrative possibilities. It became stuck between a rock and a hard place, neither investing fully in its respect for a tradition-past nor maturing into an advanced, innovative 21st century creation.

Now please don’t misunderstand me – I actually enjoyed this film. I just think it buckled under the insane pressure imposed upon it (as is so often the case with contemporary revivals of cult classics – take the most recent Halloween or Pet Cemetary as examples). Not only was Mike Flanagan tasked with adapting a Stephen King novel, but he was the one who had to follow Stanley Kubrick… That’s like if The Rock just did 10,000 pull-ups in the colosseum and you were up next to read out your new material in slam poetry. It just wouldn’t hold up. So suffice it to say, he was probably really feeling the pressure. Keeping that in mind, he actually did a moderately stellar job. From the beginning I was absorbed into the world of the film by the accurate ‘face-match’ re-castings for young Danny and mama Wendy, the classic 70s artificial film-grain (which filmmakers nowadays seem to not be able to get enough of), and the suspenseful soundscore which effectively harkened back to the original Shining (I’d probably argue that this was the best homage paid throughout the entire film, in fact). The characters, especially Danny Torrence (played by Ewan McGregor, who just seems like a really cool, nice guy to me…) and his growing friendship with Billy (played by Cliff Curtis – I was VERY happy to see some New Zealand rep in a large-scale Hollywood movie) seem genuine and are given time to develop authentically and with meaning throughout the piece.

If this weren’t the sequel to The Shining, it probably would have passed with flying colours. But I regret to say that this very much still ended up being the forgotten, slightly annoying younger sibling of the celebrity, child-prodigy eldest child. The whole horror plot revolved around the strange cult-like group, the True Knot, trying to track down little kids with ‘shining’ abilities to capture their screams and terror (small rip-off of It as well, if you ask me – King, recycling material a bit here?) in silver canisters that, I’m sorry, just look like what farmers store cryopreservation bull semen in. And to top it off, they then all gather around the bull-semen-canister-thing and suck out the ‘steam’ like they’re smoking some really, really potent pot. Just instead of bloodshot-eyes, they get glowing, piercing blue/white eyes and the ability to turn back the ageing process (which would be amazing if pot could actually do this). This whole evil cult never really clicked with me. They just didn’t scare me, no matter how nonchalant and reckless with their sins Flanagan tried to make them seem. After the absolute mind-altering suspense of the The Shining – where you honestly didn’t really even have to see anything, you just had to relate to young Danny standing in this cavernous, sinister, isolated hotel and feel as if they walls were literally going to consume you – Doctor Sleep went down too literal a ‘horror path’. Instead of letting the viewer be their own worse enemy by imagining just what could be around this next corner, Flanagan actually shows you in this film. And that just isn’t fun sometimes. Our imaginations are far more insidious and dark than most scenes depicted on-screen, trust me. Don’t show, don’t tell – sometimes it’s ok for a film to let us do the work to reap the greatest benefits as we tailor it to our own individual scare-tastes.

Reduced more or less to a game of cat and mouse by the third act of the movie, I felt it ran on for too long. By the point in which Danny and Abra (his new young shining ingenue) arrived at the Overlook Hotel to set the traps for the True Knot, I was able to predict every turn and jump – and a horror should never be predictable if it wants to be frightening. I was able to map out all the painful, drawn-out callbacks from the return of (questionably CGI’d) Jack Torrence, the hallway blood flood and the constant return to Room 237. As much as I love a bit of old-school nostalgia and as much as I adored The Shining, you can’t allow a contemporary film to rest on the laurels of a classic. I will never condone recycling unless it is the kind that will help save the environment. Also, as cool as the concept of Danny going full-circle and being possessed by his father at the end of the film, I just couldn’t help but feel like Flanagan was too afraid to put more of his own unique stamp on a film that would have ultimately benefited far more from standing on its own, instead of in the overwhelming shadow of its predecessor.