23. Doctor Sleep

By Stephen King

Recycling my Letterboxd post with some slight revisions below as I also talk about Doctor Sleep, the novel.  I also added some excerpts that I liked:

I first watched the theatrical version on Netflix in 2021, expecting it to be rather meh yet entertaining. I was pleasantly surprised to find how invested I was in the story, which takes place decades after The Shining. 

At the time I hadn't yet read the novel Doctor Sleep, but I found the psychic phenomenon portrayed in the movie quite easy to understand. Mike Flanagan did a wonderful job bringing the world of Doctor Sleep and The Shining to life, even reconciling the contrasting aesthetics of Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick.
     

And if you ever happen to be one of those unfortunate people who’s ever lost a kid—nothing left but a bike in the vacant lot down the street, or a little cap lying in the bushes at the edge of a nearby stream—you probably never thought of them.  Why would you?...  You’d never think of the RV People, those midlife pensioners and cheery older folks in their golf hats and sun visors with appliquéd flowers on them.
     And mostly you’d be right. There are thousands of RV People, but by 2011 there was only one Knot left in America: the True Knot. They liked moving around, and that was good, because they had to. If they stayed in one place, they’d eventually attract attention, because they don’t age like other people. Apron Annie or Dirty Phil (rube names Anne Lamont and Phil Caputo) might appear to grow twenty years older overnight. The Little twins (Pea and Pod) might snap back from twenty-two to twelve (or almost), the age at which they Turned, but their Turning was long ago. 

I really grooved on the idea of psychic vampires preying on clairvoyantly gifted children. That scene where baseball boy met his end was truly disturbing and horrific (Jacob Tremblay really is the default actor to portray abused, tormented children!). Rebecca Ferguson easily stole the show as the Big Bad Boho (how she sucked in Danny's steam with such reptilian relish!).

Coincidentally, when I was watching Doctor Sleep I was in the midst of reading The Bone Clocks and couldn't help but wonder at the similarity between Stephen King's Steam Stealers and David Mitchell's Anchorites, immortal beings who murder and feed off children gifted with "psychic voltage". There's even an exciting battle at the end between the "good" and "bad" psychics, much like how Dan and Abra face off Rose the Hat and her gang.

     “Oh, and make sure you talk to Walter. Ask him what drugs might keep a rube child nice and docile for a long period of time.”
     “This child doesn’t sound like much of a rube to me.”
     “Oh, she is. A Big old fat rube milk-cow.”
     Not exactly true. A great big white what, that’s what she is.
     Rose ended the call without waiting to see if Crow Daddy had anything ese to say. She was the boss, and as far as she was concerned, the discussion was over.
     She’s a white whale, and I want her.
     But Ahab hadn’t wanted his whale just because Moby would provide tons of blubber and almost endless barrels of oil, and Rose didn’t want the girl because she might—given the right drug cocktails and a lot of powerful psychic soothing—provide a nearly endless supply of steam. It was more personal than that. Turn her? Make her part of the True Knot? Never. The kid had kicked Rose the Hat out of her head as if she were some annoying religious goofball going door-to-door and handing out end-of-the-world tracts. No one had given her that kind of bums rush before. No matter how powerful she was, she had to be taught a lesson.
    And I’m just the woman for the job.

Earlier this summer I found a pristine paperback of Doctor Sleep at a yard sale for two bucks, and was almost done reading it when I learned there was a Director's Cut that had an additional 30 minutes worth of material. I found a copy online and started watching it again. 

I actually prefer the climactic battle from the movie more than the novel. In the book, the Overlook Hotel had burned to the ground due to the boiler exploding. Rose and her gang had built a campground near the site because the land is still permeated with evil vibes. That's where Dan and Abra go to face off Rose, and Billy is also there to provide help. Dan had met with Abra's dying great-grandmother earlier on, who gave him her cancerous steam before she passed away. This was Dan's secret weapon to wipe out the gang. 

In the movie, the Overlook Hotel is still standing, though abandoned. And Rose is unaware of its existence until Dan and Abra lure her there as a trap. I thought the movie wove this version of events together rather nicely. The Director's Cut also added more interaction between Dan and the ghost of his father, who "now" tends bar at the ballroom of the Overlook Hotel.

However, I preferred the ending of the novel to that of the movie. In the movie, Dan sacrificed himself in the boiler room so that Abra could live. It didn't make any sense, as Dan had time to escape and the Overlook was going to be destroyed by the raging fire anyway, along with its ghosts. It didn't seem fair to Dan's character, who never had a chance to live the rest of his life completely free of the Overlook's spell. The book gave Dan that chance, so it's a much more emotionally satisfying ending.  

In any case, the various incarnations of Doctor Sleep gave me some nicely crafted immersive fiction to escape into.  At 528 pages, Doctor Sleep almost rivals The Bone Clocks' 608 pages in length, yet is a much faster read as Stephen King does not over-indulge in literary wordiness.