Doctor Sleep (2019)

Arbitrary said:

Doctor Sleep doesn't have all those problems but it does have a terrible final confrontation between Danny Torrence and the True Knot. King villain that is put over strong most of the book, someone we spend quite a bit of time with even, jobs hard at the very end. I'm hoping the film rewrites that whole fucking thing because it is not satisfying.

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thats basically every King villain ever. from Randall Flagg, George Stark, Pennywise, Man in Black, Barlow, Killian, etc. they all ride high and look impervious, then OOPS this trivial thing kills them at the last minute. seemingly because King decided the story went on too long and its time to stop it now. i need money and cocaine aint free, boys.

Chukzombi said:

thats basically every King villain ever. from Randall Flagg, George Stark, Pennywise, Man in Black, Barlow, Killian, etc. they all ride high and look impervious, then OOPS this trivial thing kills them at the last minute. seemingly because King decided the story went on too long and its time to stop it now. i need money and cocaine aint free, boys.

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I've read some of King's writing on, um, writing and he is of the opinion that evil is ultimately childish, petulant and self-destructive. Randall Flagg's plans have to crumble to dust because he's evil. Creation is an impossible task for him. His very essence runs counter. That being a theme in some of his novels is whatever. In practice it means that there are several of his stories that build over many hundreds of pages toward a final confrontation that is a complete anti-climax. When you combine those books with the books that are on the shittier end of his bibliography that's a lot of books.

He is capable of writing decent endings. Misery ends great. Paul finishes the book Annie demanded he write, lights it on fire before her eyes, and when she tires to save it he crushes her head in with his typewriter. It drags on a little too much past the conclusion (see also Gerald's Game) but it's satisfying. Pet Sematary has a basic horror ending but it's still on target. The Shining, The Long Walk, The Dead Zone, all fine. But if he has to write a big fantasy/horror battle between all the good guys and bad guys he's built up over the story he's going to shit the bed.

Thinking about it more the villains in both The Shining and The Dead Zone fuck up royally as well. Damn. I still like those ones though!

Arbitrary said:

I've read some of King's writing on, um, writing and he is of the opinion that evil is ultimately childish, petulant and self-destructive. Randall Flagg's plans have to crumble to dust because he's evil. Creation is an impossible task for him. His very essence runs counter. That being a theme in some of his novels is whatever. In practice it means that there are several of his stories that build over many hundreds of pages toward a final confrontation that is a complete anti-climax. When you combine those books with the books that are on the shittier end of his bibliography that's a lot of books.

He is capable of writing decent endings. Misery ends great. Paul finishes the book Annie demanded he write, lights it on fire before her eyes, and when she tires to save it he crushes her head in with his typewriter. It drags on a little too much past the conclusion (see also Gerald's Game) but it's satisfying. Pet Sematary has a basic horror ending but it's still on target. The Shining, The Long Walk, The Dead Zone, all fine. But if he has to write a big fantasy/horror battle between all the good guys and bad guys he's built up over the story he's going to shit the bed.

Thinking about it more the villains in both The Shining and The Dead Zone fuck up royally as well. Damn. I still like those ones though!

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yeah, my favorite King novel is still The Eyes Of The Dragon and even that ends in the same last minute headfaked fashion.

zzeris said:

Arbitrary , are you trying to trigger me with reminding me of the Dark Tower lol??! At least they got the movie righ....oh shit! At least the IT remake finished stron...no, no, no! Stephen King, Hollywood...

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I will hold a grudge forever over Stephen King tweeting this prior to the release of the film.



It's actually impressive that it can still piss me off years later but here we are.

Arbitrary said:

I will hold a grudge forever over Stephen King tweeting this prior to the release of the film.

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It's actually impressive that it can still piss me off years later but here we are.

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i dont get it, whats that in regard to?

Chukzombi said:

i dont get it, whats that in regard to?

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I guess I'll use a spoiler but I really don't think it matters.

The girl in the book had blue eyes and blond hair. Yup

That aside, I think calling the ending of the book anti-climactic is a colossal understatement. And after the last few Stephen King books made movies/tv shows, I hold no hope at all this will be good.

Arbitrary said:

I guess I'll use a spoiler but I really don't think it matters.

Spoiler

If you remember at the end of the Dark Tower saga the loop restarts but this time Roland has with him the Horn of Arthur Eld. He had lost it years before but when the loop reset it always reset after that point so he was fucked. King is implying in that image, which he tweeted in regards to the film adaptation of The Dark Tower, that this would be the final iteration of the loop. The film is the true version of the story.

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oh, ok, to be honest i wrote the entire series off after that stinkass ending of book 7. i refused to even read the followup stuff he did afterward, then i heard he went full george lucas and started retconning stuff to fix his fuckups and have things make more sense. King is a complete clusterfuck now.

Chukzombi said:

oh, ok, to be honest i wrote the entire series off after that stinkass ending of book 7. i refused to even read the followup stuff he did afterward, then i heard he went full george lucas and started retconning stuff to fix his fuckups and have things make more sense.

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Yeah, he rewrote part of the first book so it made more sense. I've never picked up Wind Through the Keyhole (book eight, sits between 4 and 5 in terms of timeline) but I've heard it's decent?

Just got back from the movie and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The one major negative is it has a long runtime (something like 167 minutes) and felt like it might have been better suited to a mini-series or something. Worth a watch though, 7/10.

Yeah saw this today, good in Dolby. Agree 100% that it feels a bit overlong, but I didn't mind at all and never really felt bored. The movie is very "immersive", it goes very slow and luxuriates in the world it builds which I appreciate. I think if you're a fan of the movie by Kubrick you would probably really like this movie. I've never actually seen The Shining (I know what happens), I just didn't grow up watching horror movies but this wasn't really what I'd call a horror movie. I never once felt scared or grossed out, it was mostly just tension slowly ratcheting up in the third act. Acting is very solid all around, Ewan is great as is the kid and the bad guys. Really liked them actually.

I think horror fans will find this movie very weak, I remember liking the first It and a lot of people said it wasn't scary at all (I thought it was!) and I didn't find Doctor Sleep scary at all either, just a sorta interesting world and setup and we see it slowly unfold in a "yeah, that makes sense" way unlike so many movies nowadays where shit just happens for no reason at all.

Honestly probably best just seen at home, its really long and slow but if you can see it at theaters worth it. Especially if you like The Shining. Some of you will want to punch me but my hook into The Shining is really just the sequences in Ready Player One the movie, where they enter the shining world to get a key piece.

There isn't much dread until the last third of the movie, and it really starts piling on hard. Without going into spoilers, I say fans of the Shining will like the movie because the movie really is a huge homage to that movie, while I haven't watched the whole thing I know all the basic parts like Jack, the Axe, redrum, the twins, the rush of blood, the garden maze, the bathtub stuff, etc and everything comes into the story in this. I might have read the book at one point, I was a huge King back as a teenager and devoured his stuff but its 30+ years ago lol

yeah i just assumed it was a really scary movie but if its more tension/dread then this is similar, albeit with a very long (but interesting) ~90 minute setup first.

mega fans might hate the ending, so go in with realistic expectations. i thought it was fine but i probably didn't care about some of the nuances

spronk said:

mega fans might hate the ending, so go in with realistic expectations. i thought it was fine but i probably didn't care about some of the nuances

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It sounds like it's threading a strange needle. The book isn't very much about the Overlook Hotel and its "guests." Many of the iconic imagery from The Shining comes from Kubrick's version and Kubrick's alone. The Shining (book) has no blood wave, the twin girls make no appearance, there's no axe or hedge maze or Jack freezing in the cold. King doesn't like the Kubrick adaptation either. The later made for TV adaptation is far more in line with what he was envisioning. Taking the basic framework of Doctor Sleep and mushing in a bunch of Kubrickian elements is not likely to resonate with people that really like Stanley Kubrick or that really liked the book.

Arbitrary said:

It sounds like it's threading a strange needle. The book isn't very much about the Overlook Hotel and its "guests." Many of the iconic imagery from The Shining comes from Kubrick's version and Kubrick's alone. The Shining (book) has no blood wave, the twin girls make no appearance, there's no axe or hedge maze or Jack freezing in the cold. King doesn't like the Kubrick adaptation either. The later made for TV adaptation is far more in line with what he was envisioning. Taking the basic framework of Doctor Sleep and mushing in a bunch of Kubrickian elements is not likely to resonate with people that really like Stanley Kubrick or that really liked the book.

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Ive never read the Shining or Doctor Sleep, but I have seen the movie and the mini series for the Shining and I felt like this really did a good job marrying what Kubrick did and massaging the ending of this movie (vs I assume the book) to leave us in the same place. I really liked this movie, but I am a pretty big Mike Flanagan fanboy, he is excellent at putting the trauma people carry with them, especially from their family, on screen.

spronk said:

mega fans might hate the ending, so go in with realistic expectations. i thought it was fine but i probably didn't care about some of the nuances

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I think this was gonna be a touchy movie to direct for megafans regardless. On one hand you have Kubrick's fans and the other King's. Everyone wasn't gonna walk away happy.