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(film review) - Doctor Sleep

A very different film to The Shining, a film in which is the prequel to Doctor Sleep.  My concern is, there are those who watched and read The Shining movie and book, respectively, but had NO idea there was a sequel in movie or book called Doctor Sleep.  It would have been a great advantage if the producers didn't lean soo heavily on the fans of The Shining and expect them to automatically know what Doctor Sleep was, film or book.  You could argue and say, "Well if they were a fan of The Shining, then they would know about the book", and the answer to that is, "No, they actually might not know, so, it's better if you make them aware anyway".  I mean, they advertise Christmas in September, you can't advertise this film as The Shining Sequel?  Maybe calling the movie, 'The Shining 2: Doctor Sleep' would have worked better, like 'Transformers: Bumblebee' would have worked better for that Franchise, so on and so forth.

Anyway, I watched The Shining only a few days ago because I knew I had watched it before, but I couldn't remember how much of it I had watched or if I only saw highlights.  I mean it is a very well revered Stanley Kubrick film and they have taken soooo many elements from that movie to place in other movies over the years.  I mean, Ready Player One took many set pieces from the film and incorporated it into that mish-mash (purposely done and for good reason, not accidentally) of a film, so to say the film isn't a classic would be just silly.  But it took me two days to finish the movie and I must say, although I enjoyed the style of filming, not soo much the pace but I got used to it and the acting was great, it was a good film but very, very different from this sequel called, Doctor Sleep.  I'll Explain.

Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is a man who suffers PTSD due to the events which occurred in the Overlook Hotel when he was 5 years old.  He was on a trip with his father and mother but went mad and tried to kill him.  These traumatic experiences haunt him soo much that he finds it hard to cope so uses alcohol to suppress what he is going through and his memories.  Danny travels from town to town until he finds somewhere he feels he will be able to live and have a peaceful life.  However, things go wrong for Danny when he is met with a bunch of cults named the True Knot led by Rose the Hat who seek out those with the shine for immortality.

A very different film from the first one and at first, I found it a little difficult to grasp.  There is a lot of lore placed into this film in regards to what the Shine is and what people with the Shine can do.  Constantly I kept thinking of the first film asking myself, "Did I see this in the first film or anything like this?", but the movie doesn't explain everything to you and allows you to read between the lines.
The film was scary and there was tension built in places and some scenes didn't turn out how I had thought, meaning, I couldn't predict what was going to happen, which was good, however I did feel that the film leaned way too heavy on some elements of the first film to hammer it home that it is a Shining movie.  I wished they did that in the title.

There is a little girl in the movie who was simply excellent. Her name is Kyliegh Curran and her characters name was Abra.  I think this was her debut and she was flawless.  There were moments in this movie with her character that had me rolling with laughter especially two major moments involving Rose; and with the addition of Cliff Curtis playing Billy Freeman as Dan's friend, also provided some great moments.  Trying to avoid some heavy spoilers, I will say there are flash back scenes which we phenomenal.  I wasn't sure if they were lifted from the original movie or reenacted, but for some of these shots, I was definitely blown away.

A really good film especially if you like The Shining.  The cinematography was good and the music.  Haunting, definitely when they brought in the original from the first movie.  Not quite Kubrick but good nonetheless.  Mike Flanagan did a great job and he has some really good and interesting visuals would looked great on screen. I look forward to more from him.





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