Stephen King is far from a fan of the “Shining” adaptation. On the other hand, the writer believes that director Mike Flanagan managed to cleverly link his work and that of Stanley Kubrick with “Doctor Sleep”.
Doctor Sleep : return to the Overlook
Revealed by The Mirror, not a sound, Do not fall asleep but also the series The Haunting of Hill HouseMike Flanagan adapts Stephen King again after jessie with Doctor Sleep. With this film released in 2019, the filmmaker not only has the difficult task of transposing the writer’s often abused work to the screen, but also that to follow up on the monumental shining by Stanley Kubrickthat the author of Cujo and Christina does not carry in his heart.
The feature film allows you to find Danny Torrance as an adult. Played by Ewan McGregor, this telepath is still deeply haunted by his visions and by the events he survived with his mother Wendy. Exhausted, he finds refuge in the small town of Frazier where he befriends Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), who helps him find work and beat his alcoholism.
One day, Danny comes into contact with young Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a girl with extremely powerful gifts. He decides to help her when she finds herself pursued by the terrifying Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her gang, who are devouring the steam given off by the children with The Shining to gain access to immortality. To fight them, Danny has no choice but to go back to where it all began and face the ghosts of the Overlook.
Stephen King conquered
In an interview with The Paris Review and published in 2006, Stephen King assures that Stanley Kubrick completely ignored his script for shining to deliver a personal adaptation. “Very disappointed” with the final result despite its formal beauty, he believes that it is much “too cold” and that he fails to detect the “emotional investment” of the filmmaker for the Torrance family. He also dislikes the treatment of Wendy’s character, played by Shelley Duvall, whom he calls a “screaming machine”.
Despite the author’s anger towards shiningMike Flanagan does not turn his back on the film in Doctor Sleep. On the contrary, he presents it as a true sequel to the classic, including several iconic plans like those of the blood spilling from the elevator, from the broken door with an ax or even that of the specter sitting in the bathtub of room 237. Multiplying tributes to the feature film, Mike Flanagan manages to reconcile the work of Stephen King and that of Stanley Kubrickwhich, moreover, he does not manage to dissociate as a great admirer of the novel and its adaptation.
While the book Doctor Sleep ends at the place where the Overlook once stood, the director decides to leave the hotel intact and identical in all respects to that of the film carried by Jack Nicholson. If he first expresses his reservations about this idea and the end, Stephen King later admits to having been conquered. Asked by Entertainment Weekly in 2019, the writer says:
Mike appropriated my work to create a great story. People who saw the film freaked out, and so did I. Because he managed to take my novel Doctor Sleep and solder it seamlessly to the shining by Stanley Kubrick. So yes, I liked it a lot.
