Sunday, November 17, 2019

Sitting In The Aisle: Doctor Sleep



Doctor Sleep 9/10

Full of spoilers. Why haven't more people seen Doctor Sleep? Why aren't you all talking about how damn good this movie is? I saw this today with CK and did not expect a ton out of it and did not expect to like it as much as I did. I watch horror films but never actively seek them out. I have read the book, I watched one of the mini series, and I have seen The Shining. While this is a sequel to The Shining, both the film and the book, it creates it own thing as well that I'd actually like to see happen in the future. I would love to see the young actress star in everything. That girl was so damned good in this. And the villains. Holy crap the villains. These were some spooky ass people. This is about three stories that end up colliding.


This starts with a flashback of a young Danny Torrance living in Florida with his mother after the events of the first movie. Danny has not spoken since and is still being haunted by the ghosts from the Overlook. He can't even go take a piss without that nasty ass bath lady waiting for him in the bathtub. Meanwhile this little girl goes off to pick flowers and stumbles upon this lady singing to herself and picking flowers. She shows the little girl some tricks and suddenly people start popping up in the woods. The girl wants to leave but ends up being swarmed by these people, You don't see what they do to her but you know the shit is not good.


Danny, still a kid, talks to Dick Hallorann who helped him back at the hotel. He tells him that he needs to learn how to capture the spirits and lock them away in a box. Danny heads to the bathroom and traps the hell out of the ghost and starts speaking again. Fast forward to Danny now known as Dan he is a drunk. He still gets haunted and drinks his ass off. One day he wakes up next to a lady with vomit coming out her mouth. He gets up and sees his money is gone. He has flashbacks of the previous night getting drunk and into a fight and the woman doing drugs. He steals her money and just when he is about to leave a kid comes out of a room. He puts the kid with the mom, leaves the money after Dick guilts him, and he leaves. This little girl that freaks her parents out by making all the utensils float on the ceiling grows up and is 13 now and powerful as fuck. Abra Stone be shining like no other has. She messages Dan over the years using a chalkboard in Dan's apartment.


Dick tells Dan that he has to teach Abra how to control her powers the way he helped him. Rose and one of her teammates are in a theater where this very young girl is with an older man. She makes the guy fall asleep and tells him that he will get sick thinking of young girls and carves a snakebite into his cheeks. She is approached by the creepy group and drugged. She wakes up and they explain to her that she is a “pusher.” The whole group shines in different ways. Rose is the strongest one and they find people with the shining and make them hurt. The more they hurt the more they shine and it emits a “steam” that they consume. They end up capturing this young boy and torture him to death stealing all the steam form him and then burying him. Abra feels and sees this happen and freaks the fuck out exploding Dan's bedroom wall. This group, called the True Knot, are starving. It is getting harder to find people who shine because the older they are the less powerful they are and drugs hinder it as well. Dan who has been drinking from years has been hiding his abilities.


During the night Rose tries to get into Abra's head. Bad idea. I loved this entire scene by the way. Seeing Rose fly through the sky and land in the city and into Abra's room. The way it looked was so damned cool with the way the camera rolled. Rose goes through Abra's memory file which looks like boxes. One of them slams shut on Rose's hands and her skin peels away. It was gross. She turns and there is Abra in superhero form and not scared at all of Rose. Abra slams Rose back into her physical body so hard she falls off the top of a camper and her hand is mangled. She wants Rose now. Her crew thinks she should not come because she is hurt. I think Rose is threatened by someone else so powerful and wants the girl dead.


There is far more that happens but I don't want to spoil more than I have already. I want more people to see this. Rose was an incredible villain. I could not have imagined a woman in yoga pants with a top hat being as scary as she was. Abra was a cool ass hero. I loved watching her get stronger as the movie progressed but agreed with Rose that the girl was like her. Dan was portrayed amazingly. I like that more movies are starting to show how not fun alcoholism is. The shit used to look fun in movies. Now it looks like a sickness. I liked the effects in this too. The camera work combined with the special abilities made a great combination. Go see this. I am not a critic. I'm just a dude that loves seeing movies. This was a good companion piece to The Shining.

Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance
Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat
Kyliegh Curran as Abra Stone
Cliff Curtis as Billy Freeman
Carl Lumbly as Dick Hallorann
Zahn McClarnon as Crow Daddy
Emily Alyn Lind as Snakebite Andi
Alex Essoe as Wendy Torrance
Zackary Momoh as Dave Stone
Jacob Tremblay as Bradley Trevor
Henry Thomas as Jack Torrance

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