Reviews
‘Doctor Sleep’ Is Mike Flanagan’s Finest Hour
If there was ever any horror film that managed to surpass what came before it, let it be known that few have been as successful at it as Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep.
Sacrilege, some might say, to throw Kubrick out into the snow and raise a sequel to such high esteem. But the fact of the matter is, with Doctor Sleep now six years in the rear view, it’s still shining as bright as it can. It’s a marvel, on both a technical and narrative level, and stands tall as the best of all the Stephen King adaptations and as Mike Flanagan’s finest hour.
After his father Jack was taken from him by the Overlook Hotel in 1980, Dan Torrance is a changed man. Struggling against alcoholism and his latent “shine”, a psychic ability that forces him to see the spirits of the dead, Dan tries his best to shut out the horrors of his past and the world beyond most people’s sight. Even when he gets sober, he hides away at a quiet job as a hospice orderly and spends most of his time in a rented room. But when a gifted young girl named Abra is terrorized by a mysterious and cruel cult that feeds on those that shine, Dan is forced to wrestle personal demons within and monsters without to protect her.
Doctor Sleep is The Kind of Director’s Cut You Need
Despite how close the two stories are, Kubrick’s The Shining and Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, are so different and yet so perfectly intertwined. The story of Dan, Abra, and the True Knot, is one that really earns every minute of its runtime as it sculpts more life into the world of The Shining. It’s for that reason that between the theatrical cut of the film and the director’s cut, I have to go for the director’s cut every time. The dialogue benefits from the relaxed pace the extra 30 minutes buys it, allowing for little moments of character development absent from the original.
The director’s cut also has some vital bits of dialogue that, for the life of me, I can’t explain the absence of in the original cut; most of these not only develop Dan’s healing process throughout the film but also elaborate on the events and aftermath of The Shining in a whole new way. And even at a hefty three hours, the film is paced so well that the difference between the two cuts is hardly even noticeable. That half hour doesn’t just breeze by, it pulls you in and keeps you locked in.
A Technical Showstopper in Its Own Right
Though its plot and look owe quite a lot to The Shining, what Mike Flanagan has done with the film’s very particular cinematography is formidable in its own right. Sleep is best known now for resurrecting elements of Kubrick’s aesthetic spot on, recreating costumes, sets, and lighting to be more in line with the first film (this includes a dead-on recreation of, spoilers, the Overlook Hotel). And that is thoroughly impressive, especially with the casting of our Wendy and Jack this time around. But in the buildup to that recreation, Doctor Sleep forms a mirror to the aesthetics Kubrick played in, bridging the visuals of both movies.
It takes the cold, detached, isolating camerawork and framing of Kubrick’s film and brings them out into the real world, no longer confined to the Overlook. It examines what that isolation feels like when, though you have people in your life and those you call friends and family, you can’t get away from your own loneliness or desire to escape. When the confines are no longer physical, but mental, how can you still feel so trapped? The film plays with this notion of freedom within the mind multiple times, most notably the psychic confrontation set pieces throughout.
Though its more grotesque aspects can be blood curdling, especially when it comes to scenes of the True Knot feeding, the movie is just as powerful when it generates that pure, all-consuming eeriness that permeates throughout. That eeriness is the eeriness of being disconnected from humanity, either emotionally or literally, in the case of our villains.
Ferguson and McGregor Make Horror History in Doctor Sleep
And through this environment and eerie air comes a cast of star players, headed by Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson. And frankly, it’s nearly impossible to pin down which performance is best between the leads here.
Ferguson’s career-defining time as Rose the Hat is the genesis of one of the most sinister horror villains of the past decade, showing out with this predatory gleam in her eye and a lilt in her voice that suggests something is ever so slightly off. Her vocal control is incredible, especially when her mask drops and she’s able to stop selling people on a false image and really bare her teeth.
Likewise, Ewan McGregor is truly captivating as Dan, whose struggles, both emotional and physical in the film, end up being one of the most gripping performances of his career. There’s tension in his muscles as he fights against every instinct to shut himself away and self-medicate, to run away from the problem. His decision to stay and fight leads to an insane climax, which crescendos the arc of Dan into something purely perfect.
King’s Tale of Pure Pathos, Fulfilled by Flanagan’s Execution
Doctor Sleep could never have been your bogstandard sequel, because the source material demanded excellence. It demanded a re-examining of a monster who was a man before all else, and of his broken child who grew into a shattered man like Dan Torrance. It demanded we see the capacity of that man to put himself back together. It demanded villains with rich interior worlds and a dark side that feels all too real.
And above all else, it demanded a captivating ending that pierces the heart, and pays respect to both the source material and the legendary film that transcended it. And on all demands, Mike Flanagan delivered.
A24 never stopped pumping out banger horror movies. Let’s get that out of the way, straight away. Even its commercial and critical flops, like Opus or Y2K, still took a lot of really original swings, even if it hasn’t been a string of masterpieces like in their horror heyday of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Still, they may have made their scariest yet with Undertone, in a return to A24’s original MO of pure indie filmmaking.
A Single Location Horror Film Powered by Sound
Undertone is not a perfect movie, with an occasional off story beat, and the ending just missing the mark of perfection, but it is a tried-and-true testament to the power of storytelling. With essentially one active, on-screen actress and a single location, the film manages to create a sensory hellscape with immersive nightmare-inducing audio that has both story and scares derived entirely from a podcast. It is a sensory overload of pure terror, one that feels deeply sinister in its pitch-black story, one that demands to be seen in the darkest possible movie theater.
A24’s Undertone: A True Crime Podcast Turns Supernatural
The story is pretty straightforward…at least at first. It follows a true crime/horror podcast host (Nina Kiry), who lives by herself as she takes care of her dying, elderly, and borderline vegetative mother. Her co-host (Adam DiMarco, who is never fully seen) is sent a series of ten mysterious audio files from an unknown address, presumably sent for her to listen to on the show. As they begin to record their latest episode with live reactions to the files, reality slips further as she and her co-host fall into supernatural delirium. Strange noises, slipping time, and other haunted house trimmings all come out to play, each elevated by (as mentioned) horrific sound design and an even more horrific backstory.
Nursery Rhyme Origins and Deeply Disturbing Mythology
The story is about 95% airtight. Without getting too deep into spoilers, the origins of these files and their meaning are deeply fascinating, with some elements and angles involving the origins of nursery rhymes that are very, genuinely disturbing. There is one twist in particular that explores what one of the sounds truly means, which is highly upsetting once pieced together.
That being said, Undertone has some familiar tropes, and while the movie mostly touches upon certain unexplored mythology, certain scenes can feel a little too familiar to other recent demon movies like Shelby Oaks. The true meanings are a lot more creative, but it could have played around with its mythos to create a truly original villain.
Undertone’s Ambiguous Ending Demands a Rewatch
Similarly, the ending is almost perfect. There is a final twist about something the protagonist might have done that is a little confusing, and reframes the context of the film. It is highly interesting, however, and opens up several cans of worms of what this movie has to say about children, motherhood, and parenthood as a whole, as well as posing questions about the movie’s setting and timeline. It is always better to remain vague in horror, which this movie definitely does, but just a slight retweak of its final act could give the audience just the tiniest more understanding, without it going into full, mainstream territory. The film definitely requires a second watch, and in the best way possible.
A Groundbreaking Podcast Horror Experience
In a nutshell, the film’s methods of storytelling are groundbreaking. This movie is not a podcast, but all of its scares and stories are delivered to us like it is one. It feels like the birth of a new medium or style of movie, a perfect blend of audio and visual, with emphasis on the audio.
Additionally, with the story being literally told to us as if we’re listening to the characters’ podcast itself, it is a nightmare rabbit hole.
Like many people born in the mid-90s, the Sci-Fi Channel was one of my first introductions to horror. Whether it was random films playing or Sci-Fi’s 31 Days of Halloween, this channel was one of the main channels in my household. For the month of March, we’re going to take a look at Sci-Fi Originals (and maybe I cheated a bit and picked films that had their premiere on Sci-Fi). Picking films for this month was no easy task. Did I want to cover one of the plethora of amalgamated mega-animals fighting each other? Or what about shark tornadoes? One of the films I picked, after finding it too difficult to find Children of the Corn (2009) on streaming services, was an odd alien film I had never even heard of. That film is Silent Warnings.
What is Silent Warnings About?
Layne Vossimer (A.J. Buckley), his girlfriend Macy (Callie De Fabry), and a group of their friends head to Layne’s cousin’s house, Joe (Stephen Baldwin), after his mysterious death. Once there, they find the house in disgusting disarray. The friends decide to help Layne clean it up in order to put it on the market. But things quickly go south when they find a series of VHS tapes Joe left behind in the attic. What’s revealed in those tapes shows something that’s out of this world. Can Layne, his friends, and Sheriff Bill Willingham (Billy Zane) fend off these otherworldly invaders before it’s too late?
Conspiracy Theories, Mental Health, and Paranoia in Silent Warnings
As stated, this film was a late pick as I could not find 2009’s Children of the Corn streaming anywhere. Boy, am I glad I picked this. Silent Warnings has its fair share of issues. But it makes up for them in so many ways. This film is a very sober look into conspiracy theories, mental health, and the lengths that people go to when it comes to perceived threats. We get very little Stephen Baldwin, but what we do get is more than enough. He’s a recluse who lives on his 40-ish-acre property that’s been alien-proofed. His best friend (cousin?) is a scarecrow that has an AK-47. And he constantly records incoherent ramblings with his camcorder. Baldwin absolutely kills in his limited screentime. It’s like Stanislavski said, there are no small parts, only small actors.
Small-Town Horror and UFO Lore in Porterville
The quaint town of Porterville acts as the perfect backdrop for a story like this: a sleepy, nowhere town, where most people know each other. A town where the big call of the day for the Sheriff is about a missing dog. It’s the perfect setup for a story like this. It even mirrors many of the towns mentioned in Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook. Much of this film’s atmosphere, the crop circles, acres of corn, and the disintegrating house, create a condensed world that adds so much claustrophobia to the film’s soul.
Acting, Dialogue, and the Problem with Early 2000s CGI Aliens
That being said, there are quite a few issues. Mainly, the acting. Besides Kim Onasch, Michelle Borth, Billy Zane, and A.J. Buckley (mostly), much of this film’s acting feels very Sci-Fi Original. It doesn’t help that the film’s dialogue, from writers Bill Lundy, Christian McIntire, and Kevin Gendreau, is just plain boring. And that’s not even mentioning how awful the CGI aliens look. A 2003 film about aliens, when only two or three are shown on screen, should be fully practical. And the fact that they use digital aliens takes away much of the film’s punch.
Why Silent Warnings Is an Underrated Sci-Fi Original
Silent Warnings doesn’t break much ground when it comes to the topic of aliens/Ufology, but it’s damn entertaining. But that’s the thing. Films don’t necessarily need to break new ground. I appreciate the swings this film takes, whether they hit or miss. There’s a wonderful setup with Stephen Baldwin, and the slow build to an exciting finale makes it all worth the wait. For a Sci-Fi Original, Silent Warnings has worked its way into my heart.
The Horror Press Podcast Episode 57: Backrooms & Jigglyspot
‘Undertone’ Review: A24’s Scariest Since ‘Hereditary’
‘Silent Warnings’ (2003) Review: An Unknown UFO Gem
Mami Wata and the Untapped Stories of Water Spirits in Horror
Southern Black Gothic Films and Where To Find Them
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Glen and Glenda: Don Mancini’s Reverence for Queerness in ‘Seed of Chucky’ (2004)
‘Truth or Dare’: Who Did it Best?
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The 11 Most Disturbing Horror Movies Ever, According to an Actual Horror Fan
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