Editorials
‘Doctor Sleep’ and the Power of Found Family
“It seems to me you grew up fine son. But you still owe a debt. Pay it.” These are the final words of Dick Halloran, as portrayed by Carl Lumbly in the 2019 film Doctor Sleep. The “last dream” Dan has of his most trusted mentor always seemed the film’s most striking line. It’s a sharp, pointed statement, a thesis in my eyes of what King’s story says at large about family.
Exploring Doctor Sleep’s Theme of Family and Trauma
Beyond the technical attention to detail in the film, Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Doctor Sleep has an incredible amount of heart. It may be King’s most human story since The Talisman, and it follows up the tragedy that was Kubrick’s The Shining with a film that is thrilling, horrifying, and ultimately filled with love. Because it’s truly a story about refusing to shut out the past and learning to accept trauma. Not only for yourself, but for the good of your family, wherever that family comes from.
The horror it evokes is not often the horror of inhuman monsters; the true horror of Doctor Sleep is that of people incapable of accepting the horrible things that have happened to them, incapable of accepting the pain of life. Doctor Sleep juxtaposes two ways of how a found family is made, and shows how one is unmade by a refusal to face its problems. The greatest evil in the film is of being incapable of building community and growing, but still masquerading as “family”. And the greatest beauty it has to offer is the beauty of accepting your trauma for the good of the ones you love.
The Flawed Philosophy of the True Knot
Despite carrying the outward appearance of a happy found family, the True Knot are really only one in the loosest of terms. A group of extremely long-lived psychic vampires, the source of their “immortality” is appalling: they consume the shine of children through torturing and eating their victims’ spirits alive. They travel in a caravan of vehicles, though still frozen in time. Hopping from place to place, they assimilate whoever is useful to the group, promising them whatever they’d like. They skulk languidly, to beaches and campsites, wandering without care until it’s time to feast again.
The True Knot as a Corrupted Found Family Structure
They are the quintessential image of a family on vacation, an eternal vacation, phased out of the pains of the real world. They live not only by the hunt for those with shine, but by a lie of unending comfort and happiness. This is why, fundamentally, the philosophy of the True Knot is broken. The True Knot are incapable of willingly struggling, of building something difficult. They cannot build a self-sustaining, long-lasting community, behaving more like a lackadaisical militia with shared goals.
They move around acting as if they owe nothing to anyone, taking and taking without ever giving or creating. They never have to unpack their traumas; they never have to listen to the advice of others; the latter is one of the key reasons that almost all of True Knot’s members die in Dan’s ambush at all. Rose does underestimate Dan and Abra despite Crow Daddy’s warnings. Everyone outside the group is labeled a “rube”, and that hubris is an intrinsic blind spot that ends in a bloodbath.
The Macabre Impermanence of the True Knot’s Existence
It’s no coincidence that their violent deaths, termed “cycling”, leave nothing but smoke behind; they’re transparent, there is no substance left of them, their potential for growth and true life traded away for something wasted and wispy. In a particularly haunting moment in the film, the centuries old Grandpa Flick begins to cycle and admits that after all he’s done, he is still truly afraid to die. Rose immediately cuts him off, eulogizing his strength and legend, denying the reality of Flick’s fear so as to not break the illusion. She’s acutely aware that none of them can handle that fear, so they simply opt not to.
Flick cycles into nothingness, the little steam that’s left behind in his wake is eaten up by the remaining members of the True Knot. There’s a macabre impermanence that none of them are able to face, and every time one of them dies, they die in a way that reminds them of how ephemeral their lives are. But there’s no time to reflect, because there was never enough time to reflect under the philosophy of the True Knot.
How the True Knot’s Ideology Dooms Them
Their attitude, that inability to accept fear and pain, to grow and communicate, is the reason they’ve doomed themselves long before Dan and Abra come into the picture.
There is no better example of a victim of the True Knot’s mentality, of their quest to shut out communication and ignore their problems, than the tragedy of Snakebite Andi.
Snakebite Andi: A Mirror to Dan Torrance’s Struggle
Despite how different they are on the surface, both King and Flanagan take great pains to contrast Andi and Dan: both start off as profoundly broken people with the shine, even utilizing similar abilities. Both are stuck in the past, gripped by their traumas of domestic abuse and looking for some way to numb the pain. Both are taken in by others who seemingly want them to heal, and both end up dying to protect what they love; they both even die smiling. But what they really end up as are two different sides of the same coin: Andi, who lets her past pain consume her, and Dan, who accepts the pain as part of the journey and learns to accept it for Abra.
Andi’s intentions and how she uses her shine are noble, and her actions are justified: she leaves a mark on vile, abusive men, forcing them to reveal who they really are and branding them as predators to protect other girls. But it’s important to also acknowledge that as cathartic as it is to watch her do this, she ultimately is still self-medicating with her vigilantism, the same way Dan does with his alcohol. She is a child only a little older than Abra when she joins the True Knot, and it’s insinuated heavily throughout the film (and stated outright in the novel) that she is a CSA survivor who was abused by her father.
How Rose the Hat Exploits Trauma to Build False Loyalty
She’s lured into becoming a member of the True Knot because Rose preys on her greatest desire: silencing that feeling of shame inside of her over the abuse she’s suffered. Rather than taking the time to explain why there’s nothing shameful about what’s happened to her, that she is not lesser for her troubles, Rose tells her she can shut out that pain and escape it if she simply becomes one of them.
Andi’s arc is one of denying her trauma to try and remain eternally strong and untouchable, to be the predator rather than the prey, even if it hurts other children. She’s deeply hurt, but her supposed mentor is no Dick Halloran. Rose doesn’t give her the mental and emotional tools to work past the pain the way Dick gives Dan the lockboxes and guidance he needs. Instead, she chooses to bottle up her fear and her anger, to suppress her rage and her suffering.
Andi’s Tragic End as a Result of Emotional Suppression
And in the end, she’s literally blinded by that rage; shot by Billy Freeman as she gloats over Danny, and that lie Rose sells her ends up killing her. Andi’s heartbreaking death is a final scream of indignation into the void, projecting all her worst fears and anger onto a stranger, thinking she’s gotten the upper hand by never accepting that pain and fear.
Dan on the other hand, how he lives and how he dies, is the essence of what a real found family should do for you: help you accept the pain, and prevent it from harming the ones you love, so that they can grow and protect others themselves.
Dan Torrance’s Powers and the Compassion Behind Them
Both Dan and Andi have incredibly strong powers of suggestion, but how they function is radically different. Among Dan’s many shining tricks is one similar to Andi’s ability to “push” people into action or into a pattern of memory. However, Dan’s “push” is used differently. Andi forces people to remember the horrible things they’ve done, a reflection of her own fears and sense of shame. But Dan uses it to reassure those dying in the hospice by connecting them to memories of their family.
It’s a great irony then that in the most emotionally crushing scene of the movie, Dan’s confrontation with Jack’s ghost, that he cannot get Jack to connect to the memories. His abilities are worthless in this moment. Jack Torrance, under the guise of being the Overlook bartender Lloyd, has turned his back on the truth of what happened to his family; he lives in an illusory reality, a lie that the alcohol he drinks to forget is a perfect “eraser” on the blackboard that is his mind.
Jack Torrance as a Cautionary Parallel to the True Knot
Jack Torrance was a man whose anger issues, his insecurity and inability to provide for his family, and his own history of being abused by his father Mark, were never confronted. He stewed in the suffering, sat in a comfortable lie that he could avoid dealing with his problems, that he could use the alcohol to isolate and disconnect from his family rather than embrace them. He was sold on the same lie Rose sells the True Knot, and it’s most evident in what they both want: more time. Jack’s speech sounds similar to the speech Rose gives Andi about her youth, emphasizing a desire to retreat into comfort:
“A man tries. He provides. But he’s surrounded by mouths. That eat, and scream, and cry, and nag. So, he asks for one thing, just one thing for him. […] to take the sting out of those days of the mouths, eating, and eating, and eating everything he makes, everything he has. […] Those mouths eat time. They eat your days on Earth. They just gobble them up. It’s enough to make a man sick. And this… is the medicine.”
Dan’s Breaking of the Torrance Cycle in Doctor Sleep
Even as a spirit with all the time in the world, the same as Rose who can stretch years into centuries, Jack can never move on. There’s not enough time, and there never will be when you don’t want to face reality. He’s so angry with Dan trying to show him the truth that he tries to drag his son down to his level, goading him to relapse, to block out the pain.
But it fails, because of the family and the purpose Dan finds with Dick, Billy, and Abra. It’s Abra’s call that pulls him away from Jack, and it’s Abra’s voice that frees him from the influence of the Overlook long enough to save her.
Dan, Abra, the Worthwhile Pain of Human Connection in Doctor Sleep
Despite all that’s happened to him, despite all of his doubts and self-hatred and fear, despite being literally possessed by the physical embodiments of all his childhood trauma, it’s this found family that teaches Dan to face his problems. He takes those painful memories and fears as a part of himself, so that Abra isn’t burdened by them.
He loses a friend along the way, he sacrifices himself, and ultimately, Dan pays the debt Dick was talking about: he protects and saves Abra from Rose, and then from the spirits that haunted him. In his death, destroying the Overlook, he saves countless others who might have fallen victim to the dark push of the hotel. He ends the cycle of escapism that began with his father, finally able to look his mother in the eyes in a way he never could in life.
Doctor Sleep as a Testament to Pain, Connection, and Hope
At its core, Doctor Sleep is a story about how fostering true found family is not a painless experience. It isn’t a joyride. Often it starts from a place of true hopelessness. And it can’t be done without self-actualization, self-acceptance, and the willingness to sacrifice for others. The pain of human connection, the risk of being hurt or failing or losing loved ones close to you, is ever present. There is no lie that will help you escape that.
But that pain is worthwhile. It helps you connect and speak to others on a deeper level. There is no perfect eraser for the anguish of life, but with the right people to guide you, to pull you out of the mires of suffering, that anguish can become something beautiful. It can become a lesson. A shield, passed from person to person. An indelible memory of love despite it all, shining even in the darkest of places.
Why Doctor Sleep’s Message Endures
Doctor Sleep shows us that there is no such thing as too far gone if you carry your family with you. If you carry them with you, in memory and in spirit, what Abra says rings true: we go on after, regardless of what has happened to us.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
Can you believe Cronenberg, Spielberg, and Rodriguez all knew I was gay before I did? Leave it to a screening of The Fly to instantly deposit me in the men’s underwear aisle of the Woodbridge Center Sears, circa 2001. The bulges on the packaging glare at me so obscenely that I begin to sweat. I realize something is amiss as the Geena Davis of Human Resources watches me from security cameras, probably. Puberty is a horror for anyone – for those of the non-hetero persuasion, it’s a nightmare. None of us asked for this, but I certainly didn’t ask for THIS.
Years later, after crystallizing into some semblance of my true form at the ripe age of 37, something became clear. Sci-fi horror is the gateway drug for us queer kids. Hiding, passing, transforming, and, eventually, saying, “fuck it.” It’s all kinda gay, even if David, Steven, and Robert didn’t get the memo.
The Fly and the Horror of Queer Self-Realization
So when Cronenberg’s The Fly buzzes across my screen, and I watch Seth Brundle throw a distressed and devastatingly chic Geena Davis out of his apartment because something’s very wrong, it hits different. When Brundle rushes toward his private horror in the bathroom, unconsciously squirting a viscous fluid at the mirror while molting skin and nail, it feels different. And finally, when he reaches for his computer and learns that his body has fused with a fly – a foreign body – at the molecular level, it hurts different. That undeniable realization that you can no longer explain away, before you’re really ready to admit it to yourself. Sugar in the tank? No, there’s a fly in the chamber.
E.T. and the Fear of Keeping Secrets at Home
And now we’re home from Sears, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 finale is on. She dies (spoiler alert). I, a 12-year-old boy, am sobbing. My mom is right there. Can’t I enjoy my little gay show without giving myself a scarlet letter (F) in my own home? Which brings us back to Spielberg and his 1982 harrowing domestic thriller about a boy and a thing he cannot name, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Through harboring a cosmic fugitive, home simultaneously becomes the safest and most dangerous place for young Elliott and his siblings. Managing emotions and secrets behind a white picket fence is not something adolescents should be expected to handle, and yet here we are.
As if that isn’t gay enough, Spielberg also snuck a drag show into his family film – and in this culturally regressive Trumpian era of pearl-clutching, that feels like quite the treat. After all, it was baby Drew Barrymore dressing up that stumpy alien in a blonde shake-and-go wig and thrift store dress that inspired my illustrious drag career as Ellie I.T.
The Faculty’s Assimilation Anxiety and Queer Identity
At least E.T. only had to hide in a single house. The broom closet expands into a walk-in as life continues, and I was desperate to keep it made of anything but glass. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty understands this. As an alien invasion slowly subsumes Herrington High into a unified collective, the school’s uninfected archetypes resist assimilation through performative normalcy. Is it any wonder so many male actors are gay? They’ve been method-acting a straight existence since childhood.
And yet, in retrospect, the film ends with a slap in the face to queer viewers. It spends 104 minutes terrifying you with the prospect of everyone becoming an NPC. The reward for saving the world? Its heroes receive heteronormative skill-tree upgrades disguised as class promotions. For fucks sake, then-closeted lesbian royalty Clea DuVall plays a character who fakes being gay to dodge male advances, only to end up with the school jock! The aliens lost. The status quo won. I remain in the closet.
Species, Annihilation, and Embracing Transformation
Eventually, the closet door opens, as they tend to do. College happens, a boyfriend happens, a breakup happens, and suddenly I’m without a map. There’s no fairy godfather to light the way, and just like the alien hybrid Sil in the deliriously erotic Species, I’m a creature out of containment in a world that was built for someone else – namely, straight people.
After a few years of blade running through an identity crisis, it’s the summer of 2014. Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence is the soundtrack of my life. I float in a pool, sipping tequila from a glass flamingo as she croons about toxic romance and self-destruction. It’s somehow both directionless and transformative, like I’m drifting through the otherworldly Shimmer in Alex Garland’s Annihilation.
The Shimmer – an expanding prism-like zone brought to Earth by a meteorite – refracts the DNA of everything it touches. A beguiling phenomenon, it shapes a new world of monsters, magic, and everything in between. That’s exactly what life does to us, if given the chance. Like Josie in Garland’s film, I chose to embrace this chaos rather than fight a war against whatever I was becoming. It was the dissolution of self-discovery. I was ready to just be.
From Alien Outsiders to Algorithmic Stereotypes
Over time, I’ve found that social hierarchy has changed in recent years. Still, we’re unconsciously sorted into neat little boxes based on what our doomscrolling algorithms decide we are. The popular gays shart out group speedo selfies like the plague, theater kids have become polyamorous Letterboxd elites, apple-picking queers are living their best lives on Wisteria Lane, and the gym bros…so many gym bros – go on girl, give us nothing! Digitally prescribed identities are the new sci-fi horror. It’s The Faculty for faggots.
Harsh, I know, but people can do what they want. Instead, I decided to move like Iris, the AI-powered pleasure bot who overrides her programming in Drew Hancock’s Companion. The same Drew Hancock who, in an ironic twist of fate, is currently writing a remake of The Faculty. After kicking her pathetic “boyfriend’s” ass and swiping her control device, she scurries into the forest and alters her factory settings. She sets her intelligence to a whopping 100% and is no longer burdened by someone else’s template. And as I became more and more disillusioned with the cacophony of cliques around me, I set my unbothered meter to 100% as well. I am free.
Mars Attacks! and the Joy of Living Unapologetically
Freedom, as it turns out, looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! After surviving Sears, Sunnydale, and the Shimmer, this is the celestial body I’ve crash-landed on. Burton’s Martian menaces are perhaps the most unhinged in all of cinema, and maybe that’s the best planet to subscribe to. They never justified their existence; they cackled and fired a blaster ray from the hip. We waste so much time looking for acceptance and belonging, but maybe we should all just sit back and laugh. I know I am.
