I Finally Watched Dr. Sleep

September 13, 2024

Not super scary, but that’s what I wanted.

Dr. Sleep came out like 5 years ago, and I’ve been curious to watch it, and it hasn’t been free to watch on any streaming services until recently.

I really enjoyed the film, and I was really impressed how they took a universe that existed and built upon it without totally fucking it up or making it go too sideways. According to Wikipedia, The Shining is about addiction, and Dr. Sleep is about recovery, which makes a lot of sense.

Dr. Sleep is about the annoying kid from The Shining growing up to become a raging alcoholic who ultimately gets clean and helps out another kid with special abilities. It’s also about this pseudo-immortal vampire cult that murders kids to inhale their essence, basically psychic meth-heads. Watch them do it like they said my girl Rosie is on freebase.

A big draw for me was also Ewan McGregor cause he’s fucking lovable.

The movie is solid, paced decently for a Stephen King adaption, and there’s some intense and trippy scenes that kinda leave you on the edge of your seat. The movie also isn’t too Stephen King.

What is too Stephen King? Have you ever read any of his books? I’ve been extremely curious for the past decade or so why he’s so popular. He’s an extensively interesting person, and he puts the pro in prolific, but holy moly some of the characters need to shut the fuck up sometimes.

The easiest example is It. I have read It. It is as long as the bible – no hyperbole. I bought it used at the public library for $1 when I was in 6th grade. The book sleeve was missing, the corner was chewed off, and there was a gift note to someone on the first page, but it added to the charm I think. It took me months to read. It doesn’t matter if you read It, but you need to be familiar with either of the movie series’ it inspired. They’re both basically the same anyway, obviously with different effects budgets.

This is too Stephen King:

• Both movies are divided into 2 parts, and focus on the major action scenes from the book. They should have made it into like an 8 part mini-series like they did The Stand. The Stand is half as long as It. They shoved way too much into 2 movies and it shows, it goes back and forth from “Fuck this clown is gonna kill me” to “whew I get a break, I’m in love with Bev cause she’s a girl and she’s my friend.”
• Stephen King novels all hinge on like 1 main idea, like a symphony if you will. In It, the evil demon clown and all of it’s manifestations beckon the main group of kids by saying ‘We all float down here!’ like, ‘Do you like balloons? You know balloons float. We all float down here!’ If you take a shot every time floating gets mentioned, you’ll be dead halfway through the first film. All Stephen King stories do this same thing. I feel like Stranger Things lifted this heavily – shut the fuck up about the ‘upside down’ already FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY.

In Dr. Sleep they talk about ‘shining’ and ‘steam’ and a couple other things, but nothing too heavily to where it made me throw a beer can at the TV. Maybe some jibber jabber about fear giving the steam an enjoyable quaff, but nothing too bad.

Would I recommend it? Sure. Fair warning, the end of the movie is just The Shining fan service, and all the scares from The Shining are thrown in – even the sexy old number in the tub.

M-O-O-N, that spells stealing steam from dead kids.