Yes, Hollywood’s insatiable search for new
iterations for old intellectual property has wound
its way, like the Torrances’ car meandering up
the mountain road, to the House of Kubrick. It’s
so overwhelmingly a misguided mission that
you want to shout, “Don’t go in there!” And yet
“Doctor Sleep” careens right ahead, recreating
Kubrick shots, casting lookalikes to replay his
scenes, refilling the elevator with blood and
vainly trying to recapture some of the eerie
majesty of “The Shining.”
Maybe I’m wrong but I suspect even those
who don’t deeply appreciate Kubrick’s movies
will feel a little icky about such a classic being
reengineered, its hallowed halls reanimated
like a defunct amusement park. It’s one thing to
get endless “Star Wars” movies, but we might
be venturing into even more shameless
territory by leeching sequels to masterworks
like “The Shining.” Should we also brace for
“2001: Return of the Monolith” and “Barry
Lyndon: Back in Business?”
“Doctor Sleep” posits the question everyone has
been nursing since “The Shining” first greeted
audiences: What if the story kept going, only we
added psychic vampires in top hats?
The defense of “Doctor Sleep” is that it wasn’t
conjured out of thin air but adapted from King’s
novel. To be clear: King, who never cared much
for Kubrick’s adaptation of his 1977 novel, can
do whatever he pleases. These are his books. In
“Doctor Sleep,” he delights in charting a very
different post-“Shining” path. In his author’s note,
King granted “nothing can live up to the memory
of a good scare, especially if administered to one
who is young and impressionable.”