Principally this was because of the way he handled Jack Torrence. King, for his part, has always hated Kubrick’s film. Kubrick made The Shining scary by stripping away the sap, cutting the goofy sequences (beware killer topiary and fire hoses!) and injecting his narrative with his own brand of wonder and awe. His ultimate horror aesthetic is the carnival fun house. He’s good at premises but his writing is too adolescent and sentimental to be properly chilling. I do believe it is best to be creative when adapting a Stephen King novel because I have never found King himself frightening. I think this is because Kubrick deviated from the source material far more than Flannigan did. In fact it’s one of the most frightening films ever made and Doctor Sleep for all it’s visual nuance and ghostly characters just isn’t. But there’s a big difference between Doctor Sleep and Kubrick’s The Shining: The Shining is scary. Visually it’s a marvellous film that manages to evoke a morose atmosphere that bridges the gap between Kubrick’s directing style and Flannigan’s. Flannigan’s character work is always great, it’s performance driven and there is a languid pacing emphasised by the use of slow fades between shots. There’s a lot to recommend Doctor Sleep, Mike Flannigan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s belated sequel to The Shining.
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