The ghosts of another movie haunt Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's sequel to 'The Shining.' That it almost works anyway is kind of remarkable.
Doctor Sleep is one of a handful of King books I've never finished--started it, enjoyed the parts about Danny's adult struggles, but noped out when it got to the tween girl protagonist (King can do good work writing about kids, but something about this one just set my teeth on edge). I've held off on the movie because I figured I'd get around to trying the book again eventually, and this write-up has convinced me it's time I took a shot at both. I've seen enough of Flanagan's work to know I enjoy it, and I feel like there's good stuff in the novel if I have the patience to get past the less good parts.
My theory of King has always been that the further away from 1947 someone was born, the worse he does. King can write a great tween character...if the story is set in 1960, because he understands how he and his friends talked and thought and behaved back then. Trying to write someone his grandkids' age, we get, ugh, Jerome Robinson. So, yes, a lot of the kid-writing is something to power through.
That said, on balance, Doctor Sleep is my favourite King since Hearts in Atlantis, and it's not close. (In fairness, I really don't like modern King - "favourite" here means "I felt mildly annoyed through much of it as opposed to hurling the book across the room ten times".) The villains are, superpowers or not, his most human villains in decades - closer to the Roma in "Thinner" than, say, the aliens in "Under the Dome". There's definitely good stuff in there.
Yeah, it's definitely a generational thing--and yet The Institute wasn't half bad at all. Maybe it's just girls? Dunno. And I like a lot of modern King (most of its just solid comfort reading for me, although he can still occasionally surprise me), so I really should give it another go.
I liked this well enough when I saw it in 2019, but I can honestly say I’ve never once considered going back and watching it a second time. As unnecessary sequels go, you can do a lot worse than Flanagan’s DOCTOR SLEEP, but I’d much rather see him tackle something that hasn’t been picked over already.
I'm there with you. Other than that very strange Rebecca Ferguson performance, I remember it mostly as a muddled attempt to reconcile King and Kubrick like an earnest marriage counselor taking on an impossible job.
I feel that way about both the movie and the book. I've said a couple of times on this comment board that I think the book is pretty strong for modern Stephen King, but I can't imagine ever reading it again.
I'm willing to give this film a lot more credit, although I've only seen the director's cut which sounds like a notable step up from the theatrical version. For me, Rebecca Ferguson is astonishingly good in this and the whole 'murder psychic children to devour their essence' story is a knock-out premise. Bringing everything back to the Overlook doesn't feel entirely necessary for the story that's established, but I loved the catharsis of this very literal weaponisation of childhood trauma.
It's arguably not a particularly scary film - but then often The Shining isn't that scary either. At times, it feels more like a King-tinged version of a YA film (child with mysterious powers is introduced to magical world by reluctant older mentor and they must work together to defeat evil) which sounds like it should be horrible but I loved every minute.
I have not seen either version, but I hear the director's cut is much longer and almost feels like a different movie. Almost everyone says it is better, but it is harder to find. Did you find it dramatically different than the theatrical cut?
It’s been a while. I watched the theatrical version this time but the director’s cut the first time around. Overall I liked the movie better this time but missed the scenes that weren’t there, as contradictory as that sounds. The director’s cut used to be easily rentable but apparently not now. I picked up the Blu-ray, which is pretty cheap.
Aug 30, 2023·edited Aug 30, 2023Liked by Scott Tobias
DGG/McBride may be right on the nose for this and how their upcoming Exorcist film forcibly demands to be recognized as "the true sequel" instead of William Blatty's own The Ninth Configuration. But I liked their trilogy because for brief moments it seems they wanted to pull a Carpenter and move past the idea of Michael/The Shape and see what the effects on the town were. It wound up being an easy target for some reviews but "evil dies tonight" followed by a bunch of murder-drunk townies finding out it's hard to kill someone--let alone a guy with 50 years experience with little more than a pointy object--so they shift all the blame onto Laurie by the time Ends rolls around. Even there, as armchair as I can be on a comment board, I thought it'd be better to let Michael die in the sewer and The Shape take on its eventual form of someone else left looking like the murderer in the eyes of a loved one. Instead we had to have Michael come back and get thrown in the town's communal thresher(?) so it'd...kind of...make sense.
My favorite connection between this and The Shining is the simplest: the "Doc" nickname, as if Danny was always meant to be Doctor Sleep, or perhaps predicted via Tony that he would be. My second favorite is Danny's AA speech about his dad, which is blatant without feeling forced.
Among actors attempting impossible jobs, I'd put Alex Essoe's Wendy Torrance at the top. There's just no way anyone but Shelly Duvall can be Shelly Duvall but when I needed to feel like she was the same person, that's what I felt.
There’s a neat moment early on where young Danny and Wendy are watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon where the dialogue inadvertently foreshadows the action of the film.
I REALLY enjoy the movie, but there are certainly aspects of the third act that I'm not onboard with and you got one of the big ones (Henry Thomas's performance). The CGI greatest hits of the twins, the bathtub lady, all the horrors coming back at the end is another problem for me as well.
The middle section of the book dealing with Danny’s recovery and hospice work is the best part. I’m admittedly a little forgiving of King. His work is like a long-running TV show where even the weakest episodes are pretty entertaining if you’re into the series. I’m not a completist, however.
I am also not a completist, but to continue to the TV show analogy I much prefer his monster of the week episodes to the mythology ones. I've never read a Dark Tower book so its presence creeping into otherwise unrelated works of his is a surefire way to lose me.
I think that's perfectly reasonable. I only read them in the last five years or so and spaced them out. The first one's terrific as a weird little standalone fantasy novella and the first couple of sequels are brisk and inventive. I like the rest, some more than others, but at a certain point it became a matter of "I've come this far. Can't turn back now!"
Oh, I absolutely hate the Dark Tower and, especially, Dark Tower creep. I'd go a step further than Keith - I think the first *two* books are essential King reading, if flawed,, and that the third one has a long sequence that's among the most unnerving things King ever wrote (though it also has hundreds of pages of unreadable dreck). But somewhere around Insomnia in 1994, King decided to go all-in on the least-interesting parts of the Dark Tower story, which is mostly a not-very-fantastical fantasy mythology. You see, the Dark Tower world is so much different from ours---in our world, we say "thank you", but in theirs, they say "thankya"! It's a whole different language! There's a tremendously-half-assed quality to the Dark Tower story, and the whole retcon of "everything I've ever written is about the Dark Tower," is a disservice to his entire career.
I LOVE the Dark Tower series, all of them. That said: they are batshit insane, and I’m not sure I’d actually recommend them to anyone. You need to be very relaxed in your brain when you read them.
Everyone here hit on the biggest problem- the absurd decision to work his entire ouvre into the series, for no conceivable benefit. Isaac Asimov did the same in the later Foundation books. In both cases it diminishes both the main series and the unconnected books they try to connect. But he dials up this bad idea to eleven and actually includes himself - Stephen King, the famed novelist - as a character. It doesn’t remotely work.
But I still really like them. There’s that instantly recognizable Stephen King energy which at this point feels like hanging out with a good friend. The world creation is top notch. Roland is a great character. His three companions are also in the books.
And the series as a whole has the delightful surprises King is so good at producing. The first book is great, but it isn’t even the best one: Wizard and Glass stops the whole series for much slower-paced romantic adventure set in an evocative decaying world. It’s completely different than the manic lunacy / cyberpunk tinged remainder of the series. And The Wind Through the Keyhole is an expertly crafted fairytale. It’s tight and short, particularly compared to the phonebooks that comprise most of the rest of the series.
I’m talking myself into rereading the series here. :)
I enjoy this as a sort of horror x-men film, but Scott is right, that the film is done no favors by being a sequel to both the book and film The Shining. Still I found the climax enjoyable despite the definite feeling of the Overlook being used and making the film lesser for it. The climax between Dan, Abra, and The Hat is just too damned satisfying not to enjoy.
On a side note I cannot watch this movie because the child murder early on is maybe one of the most awful, terrifying things I've seen as a newish parent and I don't know that I could stomach it again (which is praise in all honesty because so often children being killed is used to shock or be edgy rather than its use here for terror).
I enjoy this as a sort of horror x-men film, but Scott is right, that the film is done no favors by being a sequel to both the book and film The Shining. Still I found the climax enjoyable despite the definite feeling of the Overlook being used and making the film lesser for it. The climax between Dan, Abra, and The Hat is just too damned satisfying not to enjoy.
On a side note I cannot watch this movie because the child murder early on is maybe one of the most awful, terrifying things I've seen as a newish parent and I don't know that I could stomach it again (which is praise in all honesty because so often children being killed is used to shock or be edgy rather than its use here for terror).
I don’t know what to do with late period Stephen King. I just took a look at a list of his novels in chronological order, and it’s kind of shocking: I’ve read 37 (!!) out of his first 42 novels (I never read Cycle of the Werewolf, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Talisman, My Pretty Pony, or The Letters From Hell. I’ve never even heard of Letters From Hell. If any of these are great let me know). That takes me through 1991.
I’ve read about 15 of the SIXTY novels he printed since 1991 (that can’t be right - it’s difficult to find a list that accurately lists his work. Stop listing each novella in a collection of four as a separate work, people). Somewhere around Gerald’s Game either his writing got worse or I aged out. I graduated high school in 1992. Maybe that’s important.
I think, though, at some point in every massively successful artistic enterprise Sick Boy’s worldview asserts itself (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EI6IQnKY6f0). We may tell ourselves that The Institute (or Time Out of Mind, or pick your poison) represents a return to form, but it doesn’t. I liked The Institute, but in reality if it had been the first novel by a nobody I wouldn’t have missed anything.
I kind of want to read Doctor Sleep, I even own it, but I’m not going to. I really like The Shining, and over the years have come to agree with King that Kubrick kind of missed the book’s fundamentals. I don’t want a Lou-Reed-solo-album production wrecking the original for me.
I have a very similar relationship to King, and I definitely think his writing changed after his accident and after writing Bag of Bones, his apparent attempt at being more literary.
and people disagree about this, but I think he largely succeeded, and then blew it all on the ending. it doesn't fit the rest of the novel at all and I think I recall literally throwing the book in disgust.
I've tried to read a few written since then, but I don't know that I've finished any. I know I tried Under the Dome after it was recommended to me but couldn't get more than halfway through, given that this small town just happened to have a nutcase religious cult in it.
The main thing I remember about BAG OF BONES is the novelist protagonist having written a novel he'd just tucked away for a rainy day.
I dunno, I always pushback against Sick Boy's dictum. I like too many later works from directors/musicians/writers etc. to buy into it. (I don't TRAINSPOTTING ultimately buys it, either.) As for the later King I've read, I think 11/22/63 and UNDER THE DOME feel like major works to me. The slept-on one is REVIVAL, which is as unforgiving and dark as PET SEMATARY.
There's a lot of thumb-twiddling in the first 400 pages of REVIVAL, but I think there's an argument that the ending is the scariest thing he's ever written.
I’m going to have to check out Revival then. Pet Sematary was genuinely frightening.
I hear you about Sick Boy; I just think it applies to King. This is barely a criticism, though. I can’t think of another artist in any medium who comes close in sheer volume of excellent work produced. It’s just that the top two dozen (!!) of his best novels are in the first third of his career - is that fair? - and that feels like it should mean something.
I’m thinking along the lines of comparing “Salem’s Lot” to something like “Cell”. I enjoyed Cell (I really did), but if someone else had written it I would (1) believe that it was someone else and not another pseudonym and (2) view it as “in the style of Stephen King”. Where Salems Lot was really something special - terrifying and sad and utterly believable for a story about vampires.
Cell is to Salem’s Lot as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is to Pulp Fiction. The former wouldn’t exist without the later and feels like a pale imitation. Not that it’s BAD, it’s just hard to judge it on its own merits.
I definitely have to revisit Under the Dome - people love that book. I didn’t get more than halfway through it though, and I’m gratified to see Green-Billed Magpie quit for the same reason as me. Nothing against scary cults in horror stories, but yet another small town with a lunatic fringe Christian cult leader?
After I wrote that I'd forgotten that the end of UNDER THE DOME is pretty bad. But it's hardly the only King novel not ruined by a not-great ending. I was really excited for the TV series when it was announced as a Showtime series run by Brian K. Vaughan. What made it to the air on CBS, post-Vaughan, however, wasn't great.
I think there were three basic eras of King: '74-'90ish (using drugs), '90-2000 (clean), 2000-present (post-van accident). The first era is back-to-back classics, the second is hit-and-miss but has some really strong moments, and I wouldn't put his best novel post-"Hearts in Atlantis" on a shelf with his worst novel pre-"Gerald's Game". His style and interests have just fundamentally changed for me.
To speak to your first paragraph: "Letters From Hell" is an article, and "My Pretty Pony" is a short story. "Cycle of the Werewolf" is the most inessential thing he wrote in the first twenty years of his career - it's not bad, but it's your basic werewolf story that could reasonably be adapted into a Gary Busey movie, and you're not missing much. "Eyes of the Dragon" is a YA story he wrote for his daughter - it's not as childish as that description makes it sound, but nor is it any great shakes. "The Talisman" is a hell of a ride---it's extremely one-note for me, just scene after scene after scene after scene of its child protagonist being treated badly by adults. If you'd love a version of Firestarter where Charlie escapes The Shop and is then captured by another agency like The Shop, and then burns that one down, and then is captured by another, and then burns that one down, but then she's...this could be the book for you. That said, it plays its note very effectively. It was co-written with Peter Straub - I've never read a solo Peter Straub book, so I don't know what he's like, but the writing is next-level florid in style and heavy on SAT words. Reading King's recent "Billy Summers", which is just 400 pages of, "Then Billy drove to the store. Then Billy drove home. Then Billy remembered he forgot something at the store. Then he drove back to the store. Then he bought the thing. Then he drove back home," it's The Talisiman's prose I inevitably think of.
Thanks for the summary! And I agree with your first paragraph.
I own the Talisman and have tried to dig into it many times. But I always stopped for the reasons you outline- it doesn’t feel like King wrote it, and it’s a fucking doorstop, so I get discouraged. I’m not really sure that’s a great reason. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and I read doorstops by other authors, so maybe I should give it a shot.
As for Peter Straub: I think I read Ghost Story and I think I liked it. How’s that for a recommendation? :)
I was not a big fan when I saw it, writing "An interesting take on the source material, being a sequel to both the book and the movie. It's hampered by how little time is spent with adult Danny, and how little time is spent with Abra. It's certainly not that the movie needs to be any longer, but the main characters end up being sketches that simply move through the plot. There are some very nice scenes and ideas here, and some cute ways to tie it into the first movie/book, but overall it simply doesn't feel necessary in any way. And really, while it may be quite realistic, it's really depressing to know that Danny has wasted most of his adulthood in addiction, and its hard to get over."
and reading Keith's summary of the parts at the Overlook really made me think "why did you have to do this?"
Wanna talk about this movie not doing great at the box office as I think there are a LOT of reasons.
A) It's confusing - it wasn't really marketed as a sequel to The Shining. Certainly reviews mentioned it and the online chatter amongst us nerds was clear, but to a normal who's just thinking about going to the movies, it was not clear at all.
B) Been a long while since Ewan McGregor was any sort of real box office draw. He's famous, people like him, but he has entered that Hugh Grant phase of career where he is somehow notable without being a source of gravity.
C) The trailers were not great - in general, honestly, Flanagan's stuff is hard to trailer and something as winding as this is doubly so.
D) I think there was an assumption that it being a King adaptation meant it'd do King numbers but,I do not think Uncle Steve's modern books translate to box office gold the way his early stuff did.
This movie was always going to be a whatsit and, I totally agree that this version is probably the best version of what it could have been. It just sucks that the first 2/3 are pretty great and kinda singular and then the fireworks factory is the worst part.
You know, I don't think it occurred to me that having Danny in this one figure out his alcoholism is a bit of a redemption for King, who famously has said there's a lot of him in Jack Torrance (and who, you can see is trying to write himself into the son here). That's kind of blowing my mind.
I really liked this movie, watching it multiple times when it was on HBO's rerun cycle. I didn't know who Rebecca Ferguson was, but she absolutely blew me away in this film. I also really enjoyed Ewan McGregor's soulful performance, and young Kyliegh Curran gave a great performance as a kid that is mature for her age. The return to the Overlook seems inevitable, and doesn't quite reach the heights that a movie like this deserves. But I still highly recommend the movie to anyone that asks me about it.
What's also interesting about this phenomenon of literary adaptation having to do double-duty to an iconic Kubrick film is that it happened twice! 2010 had to follow up an instant classic of a film off a less-than-stellar book sequel, a task befitting our most daring and memorable director (Peter Hyams, naturally).
Doctor Sleep is one of a handful of King books I've never finished--started it, enjoyed the parts about Danny's adult struggles, but noped out when it got to the tween girl protagonist (King can do good work writing about kids, but something about this one just set my teeth on edge). I've held off on the movie because I figured I'd get around to trying the book again eventually, and this write-up has convinced me it's time I took a shot at both. I've seen enough of Flanagan's work to know I enjoy it, and I feel like there's good stuff in the novel if I have the patience to get past the less good parts.
My theory of King has always been that the further away from 1947 someone was born, the worse he does. King can write a great tween character...if the story is set in 1960, because he understands how he and his friends talked and thought and behaved back then. Trying to write someone his grandkids' age, we get, ugh, Jerome Robinson. So, yes, a lot of the kid-writing is something to power through.
That said, on balance, Doctor Sleep is my favourite King since Hearts in Atlantis, and it's not close. (In fairness, I really don't like modern King - "favourite" here means "I felt mildly annoyed through much of it as opposed to hurling the book across the room ten times".) The villains are, superpowers or not, his most human villains in decades - closer to the Roma in "Thinner" than, say, the aliens in "Under the Dome". There's definitely good stuff in there.
Yeah, it's definitely a generational thing--and yet The Institute wasn't half bad at all. Maybe it's just girls? Dunno. And I like a lot of modern King (most of its just solid comfort reading for me, although he can still occasionally surprise me), so I really should give it another go.
I liked this well enough when I saw it in 2019, but I can honestly say I’ve never once considered going back and watching it a second time. As unnecessary sequels go, you can do a lot worse than Flanagan’s DOCTOR SLEEP, but I’d much rather see him tackle something that hasn’t been picked over already.
I'm there with you. Other than that very strange Rebecca Ferguson performance, I remember it mostly as a muddled attempt to reconcile King and Kubrick like an earnest marriage counselor taking on an impossible job.
I feel that way about both the movie and the book. I've said a couple of times on this comment board that I think the book is pretty strong for modern Stephen King, but I can't imagine ever reading it again.
I'm willing to give this film a lot more credit, although I've only seen the director's cut which sounds like a notable step up from the theatrical version. For me, Rebecca Ferguson is astonishingly good in this and the whole 'murder psychic children to devour their essence' story is a knock-out premise. Bringing everything back to the Overlook doesn't feel entirely necessary for the story that's established, but I loved the catharsis of this very literal weaponisation of childhood trauma.
It's arguably not a particularly scary film - but then often The Shining isn't that scary either. At times, it feels more like a King-tinged version of a YA film (child with mysterious powers is introduced to magical world by reluctant older mentor and they must work together to defeat evil) which sounds like it should be horrible but I loved every minute.
I have not seen either version, but I hear the director's cut is much longer and almost feels like a different movie. Almost everyone says it is better, but it is harder to find. Did you find it dramatically different than the theatrical cut?
It’s been a while. I watched the theatrical version this time but the director’s cut the first time around. Overall I liked the movie better this time but missed the scenes that weren’t there, as contradictory as that sounds. The director’s cut used to be easily rentable but apparently not now. I picked up the Blu-ray, which is pretty cheap.
DGG/McBride may be right on the nose for this and how their upcoming Exorcist film forcibly demands to be recognized as "the true sequel" instead of William Blatty's own The Ninth Configuration. But I liked their trilogy because for brief moments it seems they wanted to pull a Carpenter and move past the idea of Michael/The Shape and see what the effects on the town were. It wound up being an easy target for some reviews but "evil dies tonight" followed by a bunch of murder-drunk townies finding out it's hard to kill someone--let alone a guy with 50 years experience with little more than a pointy object--so they shift all the blame onto Laurie by the time Ends rolls around. Even there, as armchair as I can be on a comment board, I thought it'd be better to let Michael die in the sewer and The Shape take on its eventual form of someone else left looking like the murderer in the eyes of a loved one. Instead we had to have Michael come back and get thrown in the town's communal thresher(?) so it'd...kind of...make sense.
🎶 They call me Doctor Sleep / Good morning, how are you, I'm Doctor Sleep 🎶
I’m interested in naps.
My favorite connection between this and The Shining is the simplest: the "Doc" nickname, as if Danny was always meant to be Doctor Sleep, or perhaps predicted via Tony that he would be. My second favorite is Danny's AA speech about his dad, which is blatant without feeling forced.
Among actors attempting impossible jobs, I'd put Alex Essoe's Wendy Torrance at the top. There's just no way anyone but Shelly Duvall can be Shelly Duvall but when I needed to feel like she was the same person, that's what I felt.
There’s a neat moment early on where young Danny and Wendy are watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon where the dialogue inadvertently foreshadows the action of the film.
I REALLY enjoy the movie, but there are certainly aspects of the third act that I'm not onboard with and you got one of the big ones (Henry Thomas's performance). The CGI greatest hits of the twins, the bathtub lady, all the horrors coming back at the end is another problem for me as well.
And I think the book is fine but nothing special, the movie improved on it quite a bit in my opinion.
The middle section of the book dealing with Danny’s recovery and hospice work is the best part. I’m admittedly a little forgiving of King. His work is like a long-running TV show where even the weakest episodes are pretty entertaining if you’re into the series. I’m not a completist, however.
I am also not a completist, but to continue to the TV show analogy I much prefer his monster of the week episodes to the mythology ones. I've never read a Dark Tower book so its presence creeping into otherwise unrelated works of his is a surefire way to lose me.
I think that's perfectly reasonable. I only read them in the last five years or so and spaced them out. The first one's terrific as a weird little standalone fantasy novella and the first couple of sequels are brisk and inventive. I like the rest, some more than others, but at a certain point it became a matter of "I've come this far. Can't turn back now!"
Oh, I absolutely hate the Dark Tower and, especially, Dark Tower creep. I'd go a step further than Keith - I think the first *two* books are essential King reading, if flawed,, and that the third one has a long sequence that's among the most unnerving things King ever wrote (though it also has hundreds of pages of unreadable dreck). But somewhere around Insomnia in 1994, King decided to go all-in on the least-interesting parts of the Dark Tower story, which is mostly a not-very-fantastical fantasy mythology. You see, the Dark Tower world is so much different from ours---in our world, we say "thank you", but in theirs, they say "thankya"! It's a whole different language! There's a tremendously-half-assed quality to the Dark Tower story, and the whole retcon of "everything I've ever written is about the Dark Tower," is a disservice to his entire career.
I LOVE the Dark Tower series, all of them. That said: they are batshit insane, and I’m not sure I’d actually recommend them to anyone. You need to be very relaxed in your brain when you read them.
Everyone here hit on the biggest problem- the absurd decision to work his entire ouvre into the series, for no conceivable benefit. Isaac Asimov did the same in the later Foundation books. In both cases it diminishes both the main series and the unconnected books they try to connect. But he dials up this bad idea to eleven and actually includes himself - Stephen King, the famed novelist - as a character. It doesn’t remotely work.
But I still really like them. There’s that instantly recognizable Stephen King energy which at this point feels like hanging out with a good friend. The world creation is top notch. Roland is a great character. His three companions are also in the books.
And the series as a whole has the delightful surprises King is so good at producing. The first book is great, but it isn’t even the best one: Wizard and Glass stops the whole series for much slower-paced romantic adventure set in an evocative decaying world. It’s completely different than the manic lunacy / cyberpunk tinged remainder of the series. And The Wind Through the Keyhole is an expertly crafted fairytale. It’s tight and short, particularly compared to the phonebooks that comprise most of the rest of the series.
I’m talking myself into rereading the series here. :)
I enjoy this as a sort of horror x-men film, but Scott is right, that the film is done no favors by being a sequel to both the book and film The Shining. Still I found the climax enjoyable despite the definite feeling of the Overlook being used and making the film lesser for it. The climax between Dan, Abra, and The Hat is just too damned satisfying not to enjoy.
On a side note I cannot watch this movie because the child murder early on is maybe one of the most awful, terrifying things I've seen as a newish parent and I don't know that I could stomach it again (which is praise in all honesty because so often children being killed is used to shock or be edgy rather than its use here for terror).
I enjoy this as a sort of horror x-men film, but Scott is right, that the film is done no favors by being a sequel to both the book and film The Shining. Still I found the climax enjoyable despite the definite feeling of the Overlook being used and making the film lesser for it. The climax between Dan, Abra, and The Hat is just too damned satisfying not to enjoy.
On a side note I cannot watch this movie because the child murder early on is maybe one of the most awful, terrifying things I've seen as a newish parent and I don't know that I could stomach it again (which is praise in all honesty because so often children being killed is used to shock or be edgy rather than its use here for terror).
I don’t know what to do with late period Stephen King. I just took a look at a list of his novels in chronological order, and it’s kind of shocking: I’ve read 37 (!!) out of his first 42 novels (I never read Cycle of the Werewolf, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Talisman, My Pretty Pony, or The Letters From Hell. I’ve never even heard of Letters From Hell. If any of these are great let me know). That takes me through 1991.
I’ve read about 15 of the SIXTY novels he printed since 1991 (that can’t be right - it’s difficult to find a list that accurately lists his work. Stop listing each novella in a collection of four as a separate work, people). Somewhere around Gerald’s Game either his writing got worse or I aged out. I graduated high school in 1992. Maybe that’s important.
I think, though, at some point in every massively successful artistic enterprise Sick Boy’s worldview asserts itself (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EI6IQnKY6f0). We may tell ourselves that The Institute (or Time Out of Mind, or pick your poison) represents a return to form, but it doesn’t. I liked The Institute, but in reality if it had been the first novel by a nobody I wouldn’t have missed anything.
I kind of want to read Doctor Sleep, I even own it, but I’m not going to. I really like The Shining, and over the years have come to agree with King that Kubrick kind of missed the book’s fundamentals. I don’t want a Lou-Reed-solo-album production wrecking the original for me.
I have a very similar relationship to King, and I definitely think his writing changed after his accident and after writing Bag of Bones, his apparent attempt at being more literary.
and people disagree about this, but I think he largely succeeded, and then blew it all on the ending. it doesn't fit the rest of the novel at all and I think I recall literally throwing the book in disgust.
I've tried to read a few written since then, but I don't know that I've finished any. I know I tried Under the Dome after it was recommended to me but couldn't get more than halfway through, given that this small town just happened to have a nutcase religious cult in it.
The main thing I remember about BAG OF BONES is the novelist protagonist having written a novel he'd just tucked away for a rainy day.
I dunno, I always pushback against Sick Boy's dictum. I like too many later works from directors/musicians/writers etc. to buy into it. (I don't TRAINSPOTTING ultimately buys it, either.) As for the later King I've read, I think 11/22/63 and UNDER THE DOME feel like major works to me. The slept-on one is REVIVAL, which is as unforgiving and dark as PET SEMATARY.
There's a lot of thumb-twiddling in the first 400 pages of REVIVAL, but I think there's an argument that the ending is the scariest thing he's ever written.
I’m going to have to check out Revival then. Pet Sematary was genuinely frightening.
I hear you about Sick Boy; I just think it applies to King. This is barely a criticism, though. I can’t think of another artist in any medium who comes close in sheer volume of excellent work produced. It’s just that the top two dozen (!!) of his best novels are in the first third of his career - is that fair? - and that feels like it should mean something.
I’m thinking along the lines of comparing “Salem’s Lot” to something like “Cell”. I enjoyed Cell (I really did), but if someone else had written it I would (1) believe that it was someone else and not another pseudonym and (2) view it as “in the style of Stephen King”. Where Salems Lot was really something special - terrifying and sad and utterly believable for a story about vampires.
Cell is to Salem’s Lot as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is to Pulp Fiction. The former wouldn’t exist without the later and feels like a pale imitation. Not that it’s BAD, it’s just hard to judge it on its own merits.
I definitely have to revisit Under the Dome - people love that book. I didn’t get more than halfway through it though, and I’m gratified to see Green-Billed Magpie quit for the same reason as me. Nothing against scary cults in horror stories, but yet another small town with a lunatic fringe Christian cult leader?
After I wrote that I'd forgotten that the end of UNDER THE DOME is pretty bad. But it's hardly the only King novel not ruined by a not-great ending. I was really excited for the TV series when it was announced as a Showtime series run by Brian K. Vaughan. What made it to the air on CBS, post-Vaughan, however, wasn't great.
I think there were three basic eras of King: '74-'90ish (using drugs), '90-2000 (clean), 2000-present (post-van accident). The first era is back-to-back classics, the second is hit-and-miss but has some really strong moments, and I wouldn't put his best novel post-"Hearts in Atlantis" on a shelf with his worst novel pre-"Gerald's Game". His style and interests have just fundamentally changed for me.
To speak to your first paragraph: "Letters From Hell" is an article, and "My Pretty Pony" is a short story. "Cycle of the Werewolf" is the most inessential thing he wrote in the first twenty years of his career - it's not bad, but it's your basic werewolf story that could reasonably be adapted into a Gary Busey movie, and you're not missing much. "Eyes of the Dragon" is a YA story he wrote for his daughter - it's not as childish as that description makes it sound, but nor is it any great shakes. "The Talisman" is a hell of a ride---it's extremely one-note for me, just scene after scene after scene after scene of its child protagonist being treated badly by adults. If you'd love a version of Firestarter where Charlie escapes The Shop and is then captured by another agency like The Shop, and then burns that one down, and then is captured by another, and then burns that one down, but then she's...this could be the book for you. That said, it plays its note very effectively. It was co-written with Peter Straub - I've never read a solo Peter Straub book, so I don't know what he's like, but the writing is next-level florid in style and heavy on SAT words. Reading King's recent "Billy Summers", which is just 400 pages of, "Then Billy drove to the store. Then Billy drove home. Then Billy remembered he forgot something at the store. Then he drove back to the store. Then he bought the thing. Then he drove back home," it's The Talisiman's prose I inevitably think of.
Thanks for the summary! And I agree with your first paragraph.
I own the Talisman and have tried to dig into it many times. But I always stopped for the reasons you outline- it doesn’t feel like King wrote it, and it’s a fucking doorstop, so I get discouraged. I’m not really sure that’s a great reason. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and I read doorstops by other authors, so maybe I should give it a shot.
As for Peter Straub: I think I read Ghost Story and I think I liked it. How’s that for a recommendation? :)
I was not a big fan when I saw it, writing "An interesting take on the source material, being a sequel to both the book and the movie. It's hampered by how little time is spent with adult Danny, and how little time is spent with Abra. It's certainly not that the movie needs to be any longer, but the main characters end up being sketches that simply move through the plot. There are some very nice scenes and ideas here, and some cute ways to tie it into the first movie/book, but overall it simply doesn't feel necessary in any way. And really, while it may be quite realistic, it's really depressing to know that Danny has wasted most of his adulthood in addiction, and its hard to get over."
and reading Keith's summary of the parts at the Overlook really made me think "why did you have to do this?"
Wanna talk about this movie not doing great at the box office as I think there are a LOT of reasons.
A) It's confusing - it wasn't really marketed as a sequel to The Shining. Certainly reviews mentioned it and the online chatter amongst us nerds was clear, but to a normal who's just thinking about going to the movies, it was not clear at all.
B) Been a long while since Ewan McGregor was any sort of real box office draw. He's famous, people like him, but he has entered that Hugh Grant phase of career where he is somehow notable without being a source of gravity.
C) The trailers were not great - in general, honestly, Flanagan's stuff is hard to trailer and something as winding as this is doubly so.
D) I think there was an assumption that it being a King adaptation meant it'd do King numbers but,I do not think Uncle Steve's modern books translate to box office gold the way his early stuff did.
This movie was always going to be a whatsit and, I totally agree that this version is probably the best version of what it could have been. It just sucks that the first 2/3 are pretty great and kinda singular and then the fireworks factory is the worst part.
You know, I don't think it occurred to me that having Danny in this one figure out his alcoholism is a bit of a redemption for King, who famously has said there's a lot of him in Jack Torrance (and who, you can see is trying to write himself into the son here). That's kind of blowing my mind.
I really liked this movie, watching it multiple times when it was on HBO's rerun cycle. I didn't know who Rebecca Ferguson was, but she absolutely blew me away in this film. I also really enjoyed Ewan McGregor's soulful performance, and young Kyliegh Curran gave a great performance as a kid that is mature for her age. The return to the Overlook seems inevitable, and doesn't quite reach the heights that a movie like this deserves. But I still highly recommend the movie to anyone that asks me about it.
What's also interesting about this phenomenon of literary adaptation having to do double-duty to an iconic Kubrick film is that it happened twice! 2010 had to follow up an instant classic of a film off a less-than-stellar book sequel, a task befitting our most daring and memorable director (Peter Hyams, naturally).