The book was not great, but Mike Flanagan’s directing, so I know I’ll end up watching it.
Maybe he’ll be willing to have bad things happen to anyone you actually care about, like, you know, a horror story or something.
Weird, I loved the book. Best King in a long while IMO. I mean, it’s basically a love letter to Alcoholics Anonymous, but it worked for me, as a book. I’m very curious how it translate to film.
(It should be noted that Doctor Sleep is a sequel to the book version of The Shining, not the movie version, which has a number of notable differences.)
I enjoyed it mainly because I think King is a genuinely good writer, but it lacked any kind of teeth or serious scare factor.
I liked the book, too. The soul eater caravan folks were a decent set of antagonists. And hey, Steve even included a deathwatch cat.
It is a love letter to AA, too.
The whole protagonists being [redacted] each other felt kinda coincidental and forced, though.
Looks like it combines the book with Kubrick’s movie in ways. Curious to see how Flanagan navigates those plot differences.
Oh. He talks about it here.
“The answer’s really complicated,” he said. The answer to all of those questions for us has always been yes. It is an adaptation of the novel Doctor Sleep , which is Stephen King’s sequel to his novel, The Shining . But this also exists very much in the same cinematic universe that Kubrick established in his adaptation of The Shining .”
“We had to go to King and explain how — and some of that amounts to very practical questions about certain characters who are alive in the novel The Shining who are not alive by the end of the film — how to deal with that,” Flanagan recalled. “And then, in particular, how to get into the vision of The Overlook that Kubrick had created. Our pitches to Stephen went over surprisingly well and we came out of the conversation with not only his blessing to do what we ended up doing, but his encouragement.
Interesting that he was up for that. King is infamously not a fan of Kubrick’s take.
It’s Flanagan, so I expect him to play around a lot with perception and what the characters see and what the audience thinks they should see. Even Going back to Absentia, Flanagan has kind of made his mark by fooling around with the way film and horror intersect with a viewer’s experience.
And here I thought another movie with the same characters in it was called a sequel.
You can have a “cinematic universe” with only two movies now?
Looks cool, though.
New trailer. Looks interesting! I haven’t read the book but I am intrigued by the idea of a sequel to The Shining. I really like Flanagan’s work and of course Obiwan is awesome.
I found the book very enjoyable but just far less willing to commit to horror than the original in a disappointing way. I am sorta hoping Flanagan will sharpen a few edges.
I have not read the book but the Rebecca Ferguson cult in the movie preview looks super creepy.
Yeah they put me in mind of the energy vampires from Lifeforce. Just, you know, less naked.
In the book they never really amount to much.
So if you were looking for potential spoilers, I guess that’s sorted for you peacedog. ;)
From what I’ve read of the movie so far, Flanagan is modifying the story to be a sequel to the movie The Shining rather than the original book and it’s not clear how much this will deviate from the book Doctor Sleep.
Well I am deeply disappointed that Dr Sleep won’t feature Mathilda May Rebecca Ferguson well anyone really walking around naked. I’ll soldier on.
Thinking about reading the book though.
Same.
EDIT: let me ask this, those of you who’ve read the book: how, uh, recently should I have read The Shining to get much out of its sequel? Or…how much do I need to have remembered, perhaps is a better way to phrase that.
My memory could be failing me but I recall very little crossover to the point that you don’t really need to know any more than Danny has “the shining” and roughly what happened which is probably explained early in the second book anyway.
Edit: on further thought the events of the first book are important to Danny’s recovery and growth after those events (obviously) but the main plot is unrelated. If you remember the major plot points from the Shining that really should be all you need, although likely they are explained in Dr Sleep anyway.