Doctor Sleep (sequel to The Shining)

[surreal]

Just back from seeing this.  Not read the book and I'm only really familiar with The Shining from Kubrick's movie.  I thought it was a bit long and definitely dragged in places.  The cast was generally good (Rebecca Ferguson is gooooorgeous), but it did feel a bit Stephen-King-by-numbers and you could pretty much map out where things were headed.  The recreation of the Overlook was well done, and they were brave enough to have a Nicholson look-(somewhat)-alike in there, and someone doing a passable Scatman Crothers.  No shots of the guy in the dog costume though, but a LOT of full-frontal shots of that old woman in the bath

Not a patch on IT, but i'd be interested to know how it stacks up against the book as an adaptation.  7.9/10

[joaquin closet]

Thought it was largely balls.

No stakes, no sense of threat - the baddies seemed more scared of the goodies than the goodies did of the baddies - and therefore not scary.

Overlook stuff might have worked better for me had Ready Player One not been so recent.

Off-brand Nicholson was fucking weird, and the Duvall replacement was just way too normal looking and boring.

Also, sniper Danny?? Maybe he snuck a couple tours of Afghanistan in amongst all the boozing and trauma.

My favourite bit was the Rebecca Ferguson space projection thing, that was pretty cool. Didn't find her scary though - her whole look just reminded me of annoying people that I know.

[Glebe]

Been getting two and three star reviews. Not read the book.

[Replies From View]

From what I can tell Stephen King is quite a shit writer.  Like that writer of the Jurassic Park books - well done you did a book about dinosaurs; we'll do a film about dinosaurs and call it the same thing and make everyone assume you must have written a good book.

Endlessly dramatising Stephen King's rubbish things.  It's a mystery.



Or maybe Stephen King is a good writer.  How would I know?

[Replies From View]

Not seen Doctor Sleep yet; I do like The Shining film but then that's Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson and Olive Oyl innit.  I'll see what the reviews are saying about this before I bust out any cash on it.

[NJ Uncut]

Is it a sequel to the Shining as in "a film that is a direct sequel to Kubrick's Shining, canon, the lot", or do folk just mean "the book is a sequel to the book The Shining and this is a film of it"?

My expectations would be tempered by the answer, see

[Shaky]

From what I can tell Stephen King is quite a shit writer.  Like that writer of the Jurassic Park books - well done you did a book about dinosaurs; we'll do a film about dinosaurs and call it the same thing and make everyone assume you must have written a good book.

Endlessly dramatising Stephen King's rubbish things.  It's a mystery.



Or maybe Stephen King is a good writer.  How would I know?

I sense you're intentionally pushing some buttons here (and I'm sure you've been in the current Stevie thread), but King is actually an excellent author when he's on form. Michael Crichton, on the other hand, wasn't a great prose writer in any shape or form but he did have some incredible ideas.

[Jim Bob]

Is it a sequel to the Shining as in "a film that is a direct sequel to Kubrick's Shining, canon, the lot", or do folk just mean "the book is a sequel to the book The Shining and this is a film of it"?

Short answer; the former.

Long answer; it's a fairly faithful adaptation of King's novel but the last act is one big 'member berries recreation of locations/characters from Kubrick's film, so it's definitely set in the same universe as that film.

However, one interesting thing to note (and we're entering spoiler territory here, folks) is that the fate of The Overlook in this adaptation plays out as an appeasement to King's original ending in his The Shining novel, which Kubrick's film deviated from.

[Replies From View]

I sense you're intentionally pushing some buttons here (and I'm sure you've been in the current Stevie thread), but King is actually an excellent author when he's on form. Michael Crichton, on the other hand, wasn't a great prose writer in any shape or form but he did have some incredible ideas.

I haven't been in any Stephen King threads.  Glad to be corrected though as I've always been mystified by his popularity.  Even Quantum Leap held him in high enough regard to include him in their list of Piggy Sues!

[NJ Uncut]

Short answer; the former.

Long answer; it's a fairly faithful adaptation of King's novel but the last act is one big 'member berries recreation of locations/characters from Kubrick's film, so it's definitely set in the same universe as that film.

However, one interesting thing to note (and we're entering spoiler territory here, folks) is that the fate of The Overlook in this adaptation plays out as an appeasement to King's original ending in his The Shining novel, which Kubrick's film deviated from.

Cheers my brother from another employer

Cripes, tying into the Kubrick film contuinity wise seems a bit... I see why they'd do it, but it's also raising the bar to a level of perhaps the greatest horror film of all time, was there any way it was going to stand up well to that film?

Might be the fucking tits, like, not seen it. I like the sound of it straddling King's universe too, but the boots it has to fill are bigger now!

[druss]

I think as a standalone supernatural thriller this would have been passable.

But the numerous recreations and nods to scenes from The Shining made me wish I was watching a better film i.e. The Shining.

For a film where you see a child get brutally killed it really wasn't at all scary and the bad guys just seemed like dicks rather than particularly menacing.

[kidsick5000]

The scene where Ewan Mcgragor meets the doctor in his office, I stopped myself letting out a "OH FUCK OFF".
It was such a smug wink to the audience that was in there for no other reason than the director wanting to show off that he'd watched the first film.

[The Culture Bunker]

Michael Crichton, on the other hand, wasn't a great prose writer in any shape or form but he did have some incredible ideas.

I think he even admitted he wrote books aimed at the airport market, something for people to pass the time on the flight with.

[Mister Six]

The scene where Ewan Mcgragor meets the doctor in his office, I stopped myself letting out a "OH FUCK OFF".
It was such a smug wink to the audience that was in there for no other reason than the director wanting to show off that he'd watched the first film.

The scene where he gets the job at the hospice? I have no idea what you're talking about here.

Anyway, this was a very good film, I think. Completely unnecessary, but on its own terms it moved along at a fair crack, did a great job establishing the characters, had a bunch of memorable shots and sequences (the astral projection one being particularly impressive) and was thematically and emotionally satisfying. Also the black girl's adoptive mum was really surprisingly hot.

My main qualm is  - as mentioned above - that the baddies are defeated so routinely that there's very little sense of peril. The big climax doesn't make any sense because we've not actually seen Rose succeed at anything other than murdering a couple of kids with her friends, and there's no sense that she's that powerful alone, even after vaping some souls. Needed a scene of her fucking up some cops or bystanders or something to establish why we should be scared of her and why it takes the Overlook to deal with her, rather than Danny just picking up his rifle and plugging her as she drives in to meet them.

Also, if you're inclined to let the existence of a sequel retroactively spoil the original then this does do that a bit - reducing all the weird ambiguity and mystery of The Shining to "Yep, the hotel is evil and also there are ghosts." Rose smiling at the blood in the elevator was supposed to make her seem hard as nails, I guess, but because (as discussed above) she's not very threatening, the opposite happened instead and one of the iconic moments from the original film is rendered toothless.

Still, a cracking little film in of itself, and with a much more satisfying (and King-ian) ending than the happy-clappy one from the end of the book, if the wikipedia summary is anything to go by.

[Noodle Lizard]

The scene where he gets the job at the hospice? I have no idea what you're talking about here.

I think he means that it looked almost exactly like Ullman's office in the first scene of the Kubrick film (where Jack interviews for the job), and was shot similarly as well.

[Mister Six]

Oh, I'd totally forgotten that.

[Glebe]

The reviews are weird mix that suggest it is either boring or compelling.

[Noodle Lizard]

Personally, I thought it was mostly toilet. More like an episode of American Horror Story than anything else. As has already been mentioned here, the villains are laughably crap and Ewan McGregor is phoning it in like never before. Yes, it was fun to go back to the Overlook, but as has also been mentioned - Ready Player One beat them to the punch, in a way which at least narratively distinguished itself from The Shining.

I'm sure many of the problems with the film's story are King's fault, but the fact that they deliberately tied it irreparably to Kubrick's film ... the blame for that rests entirely with the filmmakers. I watched Kubrick's film again not long after and it really does cheapen it somewhat knowing that, officially, it all eventually leads up to a ridiculous psychic showdown with baddies getting trapped in mind boxes and such. That may just be a problem with me - I have the same problem with The Blair Witch Project being retroactively sullied for me by the existence of its poor-quality reboot. It's also at least an hour too long.

My wife quite liked it, though, despite agreeing that the final act was "horrible". So it takes all sorts, I suppose. I did like the Lidl-value Jack Nicholson, just for the comedy of it. Got a few laughs in my screening.

[Bazooka]

The Book is good though.

[Custard]

I did like the Lidl-value Jack Nicholson, just for the comedy of it. Got a few laughs in my screening.

That was the kid from ET!

A day after watching this I still can't decide if I liked it or not. The Shining is my favourite film, and I groaned when I saw the first trailer for this. But I ended up enjoying parts of it

The final third is laughably bad in places, but I still couldn't tear my eyes from the thing. Maybe it's pure love for the original, but I found just being back in the Overlook tense as fuck. Especially when Danny first arrives, and is walking about the place on his tod. It was a brilliant, perfect recreation

I think I could've done without The Hat and the little girl stuff, but admittedly then there wouldn't have been much of a film left. Though maybe an adult Danny walking about the Overlook would've been enough

It wasn't bad, even bordering on good. But was there any point? It's certainly not canon in my mind. The Shining works far better when it was left as it was

[SteveDave]

Saw this last night and quite liked it. I thought Elliot as the Fake Nicholson worked surprisingly well although they could've done both him and Shelly Duvall without seeing the faces and it would've been just as effective.

My big takeaway though is, after 25 years of being in films and that, why can't Ewan McGregor do an American accent? I spent a long time trying to figure out what other mid-40s/early 50s American actor would've been good as grown up Danny? Edward Norton? He's got the sad looking face.

I was glad he didn't do the shaky face thing at any point.

[Custard]

Sam Rockwell maybe?

Apparently Chris Evans and Matt Smith both wanted the role, but I can't really see either working. I think McGregor just about pulled it off

[SteveDave]

Sam Rockwell maybe?

Yes! He would've been great.

[surreal]

There's a 3hr Directors Cut, 30 extra minutes, of this coming to disc soon (if there's any interest).

From the director:

"I'm really excited that WB let me create this cut, much less release it. They really supported it – to the point that they made sure all of the new material with VFX was fully finished, additional score was composed and orchestrated just for this cut, and we did a full mix as well. They really let us do this right – it's a finished, complete, fully polished new cut of the movie. Nothing in it is temp."

"There is new material throughout the whole film. Some of it is brand-new stuff that was never included in the theatrical cut, and there's also a handful of extended (or altered) scenes as well. There was never any intention to release this cut theatrically, we always knew it was too long. But we worked on it alongside the theatrical cut throughout post, and it made it a lot easier to make hard decisions in the edit, knowing that some day this cut might see the light of day."

[Jim Bob]

There's a 3hr Directors Cut, 30 extra minutes, of this coming to disc soon (if there's any interest).

Consider me somewhat almost moderately interested.

[Noodle Lizard]

There's a 3hr Directors Cut, 30 extra minutes, of this coming to disc soon (if there's any interest).

From the director:

God, imagine! As it is, it could've stood to lose the entire first hour or so easily.

[Shaky]

Thought this was very decent, like, although it would've been more effective to have seen more of alcoholic, fucked-up Dan. They jump ahead of that pretty quickly.