Doctor Sleep review: It has an impact that it hasn’t really earned 

Doctor Sleep                                                                               Cert: 15, 2hrs 31mins

Rating:

When The Shining was released in cinemas almost 40 years ago, it opened to decidedly mixed reviews: it took some time and critical reassessment before it was declared the classic it is perceived as today. 

I suspect the opposite may happen to its sequel, Doctor Sleep. Yes, it’s better than expected and certainly well enough made to be a commercial success this autumn. But will we still be talking about it in four decades? Not a chance.

It definitely has some impressive things going for it, including a solid central performance from Ewan McGregor and an eye-catching turn from Rebecca Ferguson.

Ewan McGregor plays Danny Torrance (above) – the go-kart-riding little boy from the original who, as he enters early middle age, is haunted by the same evils that did for his father

Ewan McGregor plays Danny Torrance (above) – the go-kart-riding little boy from the original who, as he enters early middle age, is haunted by the same evils that did for his father

McGregor plays Danny Torrance – the go-kart-riding little boy from the original who, as he enters early middle age, is haunted by the same evils that did for his father: anger, alcoholism, depression, women…

Until one day he hops on the bus to the small town of Frazier, where he sobers up and begins a new job at a local hospice. His empathy and kindness with dying patients soon earn him the nickname of Doctor Sleep.

We know, however, what the good townsfolk of Frazier do not – Danny still has ‘the shining’, the ability to communicate thoughts without speaking, to see things that others don’t and generally experience all sorts of disturbing psychic goings-on. 

Once Danny has teamed up with his new teenage friend, Abra (Kyliegh Curran, above), we all know where we’re heading, back to where it all began, the long-derelict Overlook Hotel

Once Danny has teamed up with his new teenage friend, Abra (Kyliegh Curran, above), we all know where we’re heading, back to where it all began, the long-derelict Overlook Hotel

Heck, he’s even having late-night conversations with Dick, the chef we last saw with Jack Nicholson’s axe buried in his chest. Yes, Danny, you won’t be surprised to hear, still sees dead people.

But where Stanley Kubrick’s film was all mysterious and unresolved, the new film – directed by emerging horror specialist Mike Flanagan – is far more thoroughly spelled out, and much closer to the wishes of Stephen King, who supplied the novels on which the two films are based and is a firm believer in there being something spooky/evil out there. 

Which is where Ferguson comes in.

There’s a real excitement to seeing the old place. All the iconography from The Shining is there – the typewriter, the axe, the shattered doorway – and individual scenes are lovingly reprised

There’s a real excitement to seeing the old place. All the iconography from The Shining is there – the typewriter, the axe, the shattered doorway – and individual scenes are lovingly reprised

She plays Rose the Hat, charismatic leader of an itinerant band of semi-immortals known as The True Knot, who live off the powers of psychic children. I’m afraid they extract those powers by torturing and killing their young victims. 

One particular scene, with its horrific echoes of real-life murders, is almost too awful to watch.

Editing his own footage and probably including one too many back-stories, Flanagan supplies us with a distinctly bitty-feeling picture that takes a while to hang together. But once Danny has teamed up with his new teenage friend, Abra (Kyliegh Curran), we all know where we’re heading, back to where it all began, the long-derelict Overlook Hotel.

There’s a real excitement to seeing the old place. All the iconography from The Shining is there – the typewriter, the axe, the shattered doorway – and individual scenes are lovingly reprised, along with that extraordinary score. 

But there’s no Nicholson in front of the camera, no Kubrick behind it. So while Doctor Sleep has an undeniable watchability, it also has an impact that it hasn’t really earned.

 

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK

 

Sorry We Missed You (15)

Rating:

As a film-maker, Ken Loach doesn’t know when to stop. On and on he goes here, piling on the misery, one wretched setback after another, until – well before the end – the average cinema-goer is likely to think ‘that’s quite enough’.

Which is a shame as the point that the I, Daniel Blake director – with screenwriter Paul Laverty – makes is an important one, about the many evils of the ‘gig economy’, and Kris Hitchen and Debbie Honeywood are terrific as the hard-working Geordie couple who just can’t catch a decent break.

She’s trying to balance being a mother with an exhausting job as a care worker, where she’s paid only for the visit and not her travelling time. He has just started a new job as a delivery driver, but has to supply his own van and is only paid per delivery. 

They’re struggling with their 14-hour days but getting by – until their teenage son starts getting into trouble.

 

After The Wedding (12A)

Rating:

Based on a Danish 2006 film, this US remake is quite extraordinary in that it has a top-notch cast led by Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams giving perfectly good performances, yet it still descends into almost laughably silly melodrama. 

Even Dynasty wouldn’t have attempted the sort of daft plot twists on show here.

Michelle Williams (above) plays a devoted but po-faced manager of an Indian orphanage that takes care of the city’s many street children. They’re always short of funds

Michelle Williams (above) plays a devoted but po-faced manager of an Indian orphanage that takes care of the city’s many street children. They’re always short of funds

Williams plays a devoted but po-faced manager of an Indian orphanage that takes care of the city’s many street children. They’re always short of funds, so when a wealthy media magnate (Moore) offers to make a seven-figure donation, Isabel (Williams) has no choice but to travel to New York, where she is also invited to a family wedding. 

I could tell you what happens next but I don’t think you’d believe me.

 

Brittany Runs A Marathon (15)

Rating:

A young and overweight New Yorker resolves to get her under-achieving and chaotic life in order by running the New York marathon. Soon she’s got the training buddies – gay man, embittered older woman – to help her and a new part-time job. 

With female self-image at the heart of this slow and only sporadically funny film, the whole thing – including Jillian Bell’s on-off central performance – might have been much better if it had been written and directed by a woman, rather than Paul Downs Colaizzo.   

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