Opinion: Why sleep in doctors can not be a real sequel to the film version of The Shining

By Jesse Schedeen

Stephen King's iconic horror story, The Shining, finally has a sequel to the movie. The first Doctor Sleep trailer was posted on the Internet, offering horror enthusiasts a glimpse of the much older and more snappy Ewan McGregor, Danny Torrance. Surprisingly, the trailer is doing its best to show that Doctor Sleep is a continuation of the 1980 version of The Shining. He reuses extracts from Stanley Kubrick's film and recreates even one of the most iconic images of this film with McGregor in place of Jack Nicholson. But as exciting as a direct sequel to one of the most famous horror films of all time, it does not really make sense that Doctor Sleep relies on Kubrick's The Shining.

There are a number of fundamental differences between King's novel and Kubrick's film adaptation. King has tended to stand out from the film over the years, taking for granted some of Kubrick's changes to the source. Some of these changes are understandable. Kubrick should have faced a difficult challenge in trying to portray the deadly hedge animals of the book in 1980. And it goes without saying that a two-hour film will not be able to include all the development of the character and the story background described in a novel.

However, there are key areas where the intrigue of Kubrick's The Shining clashes with the novel and its aftermath. The character Dick Hallorann is killed by Jack Torrance in the film, while in the book, he survives and helps Danny and Wendy escape the condemned Overlook hotel. This is important because Dick also plays a role in the King Sleep Doctor Sleep novel. Early in the novel, he serves as Danny's father figure, helping him recover from the trauma he has experienced in the Overlook and teaching him to better control his "Shining" power. This training in turn becomes essential in the heyday of Doctor Sleep.

Strangely, Dick will appear in the film adaptation of Doctor Sleep. Carl Lumbly will resume the role made famous by Scatman Crothers in the film Kubrick. Unless Dick is supposed to appear only as a persistent mind, it's hard to see how his inclusion aligns with the events of the first film.

The most fundamental difference between the movie and movie versions of The Shining, however, is the nature of the Overlook hotel and the threat to the Torrance family. Kubrick has created a deliberate ambiguity in history. Much of the horror is psychological rather than overtly supernatural. The film creates a feeling of unease as it explores the frightening and sometimes physically impossible layout of the Overlook. Even with iconic scare moments like the Grady Twins, the blood-soaked elevator and the woman in room 237, the film never specifies whether it's true ghostly or ghostly events. Terrifying hallucinations. There are few things in the movie that can not be explained as the side effects of a really nasty case of cabin fever.

In comparison, King's novel clearly shows that Overlook is truly haunted and has become a cloaca of supernatural activity. Neither is it question of whether Danny Torrance actually has psychic powers. This simple approach continues at Doctor Sleep. There is little room for subtlety in a story where villains are a convoy of elderly vampires, driving recreational vehicles, which feed on the psychic energy of young children.

It's hard to see how the Doctor Sleep movie can faithfully recreate the tone and atmosphere of the Kubrick movie while adhering to the novel's plot. The flashbacks on the movie are fine, but what is the point of creating this link if Doctor Sleep can not duplicate the psychological and ambiguous approach of Kubrick's work? At one point, the film seems to be harming itself by clinging to Kubrick's work rather than embracing its differences.

The following would have perhaps been better to follow the example of the movie 1984: 2010: the year of contact. While it was apparently a continuation of the movie 2001: A Kubrick Space Odyssey, 2010 made no effort to recreate the look or feel of this film. He instead followed the path laid out by Arthur C. Clarke's novel and brushed aside the comparison with one of the most prominent sci-fi movies ever published.

Not surprisingly, screenwriter / director Mike Flanagan seems to realize that the novel Doctor Sleep and the film version of The Shining are not fully compatible. Recently, Flanagan said, "This is an adaptation of the novel Doctor Sleep, which is Stephen King's sequel to his novel, The Shining, but it also exists in much the same cinematic world that Kubrick established in his film adaptation "The Shining. Sometimes, very different sources have been the most exciting and exciting part of this creativity for us. "

Let's hope that Flanagan will find a way to marry book and film and create an adaptation linking the two worlds. But from what we have seen of Doctor Sleep so far, he may have made a mistake in trying to forge such a strong link with a beloved horror movie.

Jesse is a writer with gentle manners for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket in follow @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.