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A lot of people regard Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining as a masterclass in filmmaking, but one particular person who doesn’t like the film is the novel’s author Stephen King. With Doctor Sleep acting as a sequel to Kubrick’s The Shining, King himself has gone on to say that director Mike Flanagan has actually ‘redeemed’ Kubrick’s film, for him at least.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, King talks about his disdain for The Shining film, going so far as to call it a “Cadillac with no engine in it. You can’t do anything with it except admire it as a sculpture.” When it comes to Doctor Sleep though, Falanagan had made sure to appease both King as well as the fans of the Kubrick film.
King goes on to explain:
“I read the script to this one very, very carefully… Because obviously I wanted to do a good job with the sequel, because people knew the book The Shining, and I thought, I don’t want to screw this up. Mike Flanagan, I’ve enjoyed all his movies, and I’ve worked with him before on Gerald’s Game. So, I read the script very, very carefully and I said to myself, ‘Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here.”
So far, it looks like King isn’t the only one that’s happy with Doctor Sleep. Reviews for the film have all been great so far, and it looks like Flanagan has made a film that respects The Shining, but doesn’t try too hard to keep up to its legacy.
Hopefully audiences will agree when they check out Doctor Sleep which comes out this Nov. 8.
