Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, November 8, 2019)

Sequel to The Shining:

 

I loved the music cue about halfway through the trailer (is that music from the original? because I don't think I recognize it) but everything else felt incredibly generic. And then the decision to copy the broken doorway shot and then play the opening music from The Shining seems super lazy.

I hope I'm wrong on this but it looks bad.

 

I have never read the novel, but I do have to say that I am extremely surprised that they would lean so heavily into all of that Kubrick's Shining imagery. That just seems like really setting yourself up for some tough comparisons. That is ballsy.

I say that as a pretty big fan of Mike Flanagan's work, too. I hope this rises to the occasion so-to-speak.

 

I hope it’s good but I have major doubts.

 

Damn. This looks really really bad. Like it was shot for a TV movie or something. I love how the only parts of the trailer that were captivating were the sequences that showed clips from The Shining lol. The music was good at least

 

I’m really not opposed to the idea of this being a movie but you need someone like Paul Thomas Anderson at the helm

 

All bad takes in this thread.

 

Mike Flanagan is very good and I trust him and Ewan McGregor is also very good, but I read the first 100 pages of this book and it was some of the limpest, laziest I've ever seen from King. don't know if you can make a great movie from source material that rough, but maybe?

 

I enjoyed the book, but it really has almost nothing in common with The Shining, and I'm surprised it looks like they're curbing so much from it. This movie should've been made as a complete standalone.

 

I have enjoyed what I’ve seen from Flanagan, with Hill House being my favorite, but from a visual standpoint it just looks really stale. We’ll see I guess

 

Agreed.

 

The only interesting parts of the trailer were the Shining call backs. I really like Ewen McGregor but he seems to regularly pick shitty movies.

And of course I'm stoked on Rebecca Ferguson but still....meh.

 

Shawshank was pretty bad and the movie turned out good.

 

that's a fair point, though I'd argue that adapting a novella gives plenty of room for the director to add their flair and the screenwriter to expand in a meaningful way. it's hard to imagine Flanagan having much room to change anything in Doctor Sleep with it's length

 

True. Struggling to think of any other examples atm.

 

I haven’t read this so I don’t know how adaptable it is specifically, but a LOT of the best film adaptations come from mediocre or even flat out bad source material.

 

Battlefield Earth was pretty great! [/sarcasm]

 

It was certainly.......... exceptional.

 

You disagree that it's a bold move to set your horror film up to be compared with one of the most well-regarded horror films of all time...?

 

It's a sequel...

The only clip from Kubrick's film is the bloody elevator scene. Everything else is brand new.

 

Again, the only clip in the trailer from Kubrick's film is the bloody elevator shot.

'Doctor Sleep' director recreated scenes from 'The Shining' for new movie

 

I think using actual clips and/or recreating them is having the same negative effect though. I’m assuming that’s what they meant because that was thought as well.

 

I wasn't talking about just actually straight using clips, but playing with imagery from Kubrick's film altogether.

I was under the impression that the novel Doctor Sleep was a sequel to the novel The Shining, and I thought this film was going to be an adaption of that book and not necessarily a sequel to Kubrick's film, even though there would obviously be some things in common. One of the main things that made me think that was King's well-known and very strong dislike of Kubrick's film.

I am not saying that it is necessarily bad yet - I don't know, I haven't seen it - I was just saying it is ballsy, and also that I found it surprising.

 

battlefield earth is an extremely pleasant watching experience

 

Stephen King Had to Approve the DOCTOR SLEEP Changes Involving Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING