King’s demons lose their shine in ‘Doctor Sleep’

Many fans of Stephen King’s novel “The Shining” reviled Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie adaptation. King himself has spoken on the record for nearly four decades about his anger over what Kubrick did to his book. Kubrick omitted the analysis of the Torrance family history and discarded King’s original ending.

“Doctor Sleep” is writer-director Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of King’s own sequel to his book. In one stroke, Flanagan attempts to settle the score between King and Kubrick, pay tribute to the director’s genius and fashion a horror thriller that does justice to King’s subject and themes.

What we get instead is an overlong (the movie runs two and a half hours), cumbersome and tedious mishmash of endless exposition and recycled ideas from the King canon. Flanagan’s way of honoring Kubrick, who died in 1999, is simply to rip off scenes of a boy pedaling over carpets and hardwood floors and a woman’s decaying corpse rising from a bathtub, pale imitations of “The Shining.”

With all these competing voices, it’s no wonder this mess of a movie doesn’t pay off. In the film’s plot, the adult Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is an alcoholic drifter who drinks to blot out the memories of what happened to him at the Overlook Hotel and to suppress his telepathic powers. One day, a teenage girl named Abra (Kyleigh Curran) makes contact with him. She has the same power that he has, but Abra is stronger. She needs his help to stop the True Knot, a nomadic cult of semi-immortals who feed on the souls — the “steam” — of young children.

Despite bodies that explode into dust and sinister glowing eyes, “Doctor Sleep” seldom feels like a horror movie. It’s too busy jumping from one town to another and too obsessed with reconciling the distinct imaginations of King and Kubrick to build a sense of dread or terror.

The only reason to see the movie is Rebecca Ferguson’s memorable turn as the cult leader Rose the Hat. Combining a low, syrupy voice and feline stare to radiate an erotic magnetism, Ferguson suggests a modern American version of C.S. Lewis’ White Witch — an evil mastermind who ensnares innocent children with ice-cold ferocity.

One ridiculous conceit of “Doctor Sleep” is its attempts to recreate “The Shining,” which are both technically inferior and awkwardly inserted into the action. Flanagan mimics Kubrick’s camera technique, but it comes across as flashy and cheap. Kubrick’s tracking shots and lighting effects emphasized the claustrophobia and isolation of a single setting, the Overlook. “Doctor Sleep” is all over the place as it covers 10 years of events across several states.

Then there are the lookalike actors cast in “Doctor Sleep” to play the characters from Kubrick’s original movie. Silliest of all is the appearance of Henry Thomas (of “E.T.”) as a leering copy of Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance, seen only in profile, wearing what seems to be a dark, long-haired fright wig. If “Doctor Sleep” is King’s cinematic revenge, Kubrick must be spinning in his grave.