Doctor Sleep (2019)
Dare to go back
Much like the fabled It coming around every 27 years - or whatever it is, I honestly don’t remember - it seems other Stephen King works also like to come back from nowhere to carry onward with trying to terrorize the minds of all. As we still wait for the murder-comedy that I keep expecting to show up at some time, we instead get another spooky treat to watch - or at least something most would assume would be meant to thrill and spook, considering it comes from the mind of King. I’ll be honest here - I don’t think I’ve once watched a Steven King based movie and actually got frightened by it - it’s more horrifying looking at the general public’s reception reflected as ratings then what’s happening in the movies. That said, I do enjoy many a King flick - and that Jack in Shinning was a darn classic slow burn mind humper as quotable as the bar is stocked. Fast forward many years and get your shine on, tonight we check out Doctor Sleep.
I actually haven’t watched The Shinning in a long time. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it - I just don’t own it. That said, a band I’ve been listening too lately has a a song influenced by the first, and the movie is easily remembered anyways - so I was kind of wondering where they would go with this. Was it going to be trippy in the head? Was it going to be spooky and atmospheric? Would it be at the hotel? I mean, there’s a lot of questions for a person who never read any of King’s works or keeps up with news articles on the productions of movies - I really only even knew about it because a friend saw it and at one point I saw a single trailer for it. Still, it seems like plenty of things were left to work with as far as the story goes - and honestly, I’m not that disappointed at all. Major forewarning - this bad boy is about as speedy as the first one, which is to say if you aren’t one for slow burn stories that take their time before they start to really amp anything up, you may have a hard time with this one. I have a history of calling out movies of the modern era being too long for my tastes - and I know some people are fine with movies being five hours long with three sets of after credits skits and credits that take half the run time to roll by from the sheer number of people on the production teams, and that’s okay. Just be advised, I start getting a bit judgemental of movies after they hit the past two hour mark. Couldn’t it be shorter? Is it all necessary?
Let us see here, shall we? The start of the movie is setting up our main dude Danny - the kid from the first if you’ve seen it. Now, I’d recommend watching that first if you haven’t before checking this out - true, the other main cast all has nothing to do with the first, but the ending overload of nostalgia could perhaps seem a bit much for someone who isn’t already aware of most of the happenings of the first, and a few “who the heck is that supposed to be” questions may pop up as well. You could probably get away having fun with this movie without all of that - heck, some of the parts that felt like bogging it down to me might actually feel more fresh to someone who didn’t see the first. Most that setup consists of essentially throwing him into his deceased fathers shoes in one particular way - which helps develop his character some, but also - and here’s where “movie’s too long” me comes in - feels a bit like unnecessary padding to the rest of the plot going on. That rest of plot revolves around a young girl who also has the shine - big time, like the Anakin Skywalker of shine - who gets tangled up in the dangers of eavesdropping on a band of shine-eaters who then target her. I guess I probably should elaborate, but the shine is a pyschic-ish power of sorts. It feels like it’s more than that going off the movies, and someone whose read the books could probably populate a thesis on it and it’s various uses, but I’m just here in the movie verse going “gives sweet eye glows and psychic force ghost powers.” Look, it might not seem the most plausible plot, but at least the second one is incredibly interesting to me, and the main reason in which I probably even stuck around here. Finally, the characters get out of this weird backstory zone and into some actual motive and action, and I love it. The fact that it felt like a third of the movie was bland setup regardless of how necessary or not doesn’t matter that much to me as long as it gives me something that my eyes and brain calls out as being cool enough I want more of it.
The characters have some mystery about them, coupled with the shine and crazy elements when things start going somewhere does - as I mentioned - interest the heck out of me. It gives this mystical creepy element to some of them, making them feel almost like evil ghosts. It uses interesting visual design - at least most of the time - to set it up, like making the mind a library or the transition through sleep or trance from one place to another in this inception style world turning. It invokes questions that you may not get the answers to, and yet you aren’t enraged when you don’t get the answers either. It also opens up a lot of supernatural elements that are more mundane - that kicking eye glow, for example. All of these effects, including the much more violent ones, look great - in honesty, perhaps the weakest looking effect is the “steam,” which in fact looks pretty largely like steam but suffers perhaps a bit more from the interaction with things or people around it when used more pronounced. There is a wide range of stuff too - even things like the old alpha tint ethereal look crop up - it’s much more visually arresting then I would have expected, but in a totally different way then it’s predecessor. Tell you what, it’s come a heck of a way from poorly animated CG lion hedges (which, I should mention, is not the one tied to this as the start).
Ain’t she just the prettiest evil thing you ever did see?
The actors do a good job here to the one. Heck, even most the kids are pretty convincing, even if they don’t show up super often. This is also a good thing, because you spend a lot more time with the actors then the effects. For the most part, the band of bads don’t have much of anything to them - rather symbolized in how most are handled in the later part of the movie. Sure you have the main gal who does a spooky job, coming off at times perhaps a bit like some sort of black witch hippie combo, but beyond that most the others are throwaways who don’t even really have much of anything in the line of lines. Actually, I don’t think most have more than one line - and that’s cheating considering that line is just mumbo chant anyways. For acting purposes, it’s hard to say if they did good or bad because there’s practically nothing there to go off of. The main kid’s parent’s do a good job in the time they have, and our lead also does a pretty dang good job. At times acting can come across a little subdued, but I wouldn’t ever really call most the stuff that does feel like acting bad in any sense.
Audio does a good job here as well. We get the theme from the last making a reappearance a few times - and it’s still a pretty good spooky theme. More than that or any other music, most the “tracks” are really what amounts to a heart beat - which helps to make some scenes, as it adds this little bit of unease to things. Things are well balanced here - no issues like I had with last weeks movie - and the line deliveries are usually pretty spot on for what you’d want them to be. Background also helps to make things feel a bit more alive or perhaps a little creepy at times, so it feels relatively like a lived-in world.
As far as composition goes, it’s done well. Everything is crisp looking, everything is colorful and not feeling blown out at all. We get some nice sweeping shots and cuts and all sorts of things - someone was good behind the camera and in the cutting room. Now, this is where things might get a bit hairy as well though, so buckle into your seats. Nostalgia is a lot like a fingertrap. It’s cool, novel, but quickly can become frustrating or even dumb. See, whereas the front end of this movie is loaded with new, albeit slow, things the final stretch gets really heavy in the nostalgia run. Heavy to the point of showing old bits, recreating shots - including sweeping (I would imagine in this day) drone shots - and some other things. It works well enough with the plot - in fact, it makes perfect sense. Well, mostly anyways - but at times it does feel like it’s a heavy lean into the nostalgia, and sometimes you don’t want that feeling of “remember this other thing you probably really enjoyed?” It ties back in to my statement of not preferring extended run times - it’s pretty easy for a lot of it to turn into a feeling of padding runtime, and in a longer movie it really doesn’t need it particularly when the movie is doing fine without the nostalgia crutches. I appreciate it, because it is awesome when they might insert a flashback to the first but it’s been either recreated or re-stitched from the old film in glorious higher definition to look fantastic - but I also fully acknowledge when it feels like it’s getting a bit unnecessary.
The classic adventure start.
So there you have it. I feel my buddy’s response when I asked him how it was back when it came out is actually a pretty good one - “I wanted to hate it but it’s actually pretty good.” The slower beginning wore a bit on my patience, as I much preferred the new story of mystic things happening then some troubled man falling into his dad’s alcoholic and violent footsteps until he can turn his life around. I started to wonder if the nostalgia bits were really necessary, but I still liked them being there. It felt a bit off when I saw a returning character and they weren’t the original actor, but sometimes it was nice to see those characters coming back for a little bit even if just a flashback. In the end, I do feel a bunch probably could have been left out without effecting too much of the movie, but I’m also relatively happy with most of what I saw. At times, you might not like it, but as a whole it’s actually pretty enjoyable.