Film wot I watched: Doctor Sleep extended directors cut.
This was good. Really, really good. I loved the pacing, the direction was really great, a great score, visually interesting and a good attempt to recapture the Kubrick vibe. I liked all the actors who did a fantastic job (especially some of the minor characters) and thought that McGregor was crushing it. It’s a massive 3 hours long and I was deeply invested for well over 2 hours.
Then they went back to the lodge and it felt like completely unnecessary fan service. To be fair, I wasn’t feeling Danny’s mother stand-in from the beginning (She doesn’t have that intense weird look of the original actor) but I could see past that but when it started rolling out the lodge, fake Jack, the axe, maze in the snow, recreating the iconic camera following the axe swing, the “here’s Johnny” and so on, I lost interest. It’s probably a problem with the source material but even just getting to the lodge seemed contrived...
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
The kid had already demonstrated she was stronger than the big bad so why did they have to run to Columbia to get assistance from the lodge? If the plan was to have the ghosts come out their boxes and kill her; the ghosts had already demonstrated that they didn’t need to be at the lodge to exist, so why couldn’t he let them out somewhere else?
It really pissed me off because it was fucking excellent up until then - and I mean really fucking excellent - but this last 40 minutes was just not up to snuff. It was cheap and a bit rubbish. McGregor tried to do his best Jack impression but it just wasn’t doing it for me. It stained my overall impression of the film and I was just horribly disappointed that the story went where it did, like a cheap horror film.
I’d give it a 8/10 as is, but honestly had it changed that last 40 minutes it would have been 9, maybe even 10. The weird thing was, I reckon this film would have been better had it not been directly related to The Shining. My idea to end it though:-
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
All the villains die at the shoot out (maybe rearranged to be lengthier - also, I’d take the handguns off all of the baddies. Why did every single one of them have a gun!?) but they do get smashed to bits. I loved that bit by the way, they all rock up and just get fucking murdered! Great stuff.
The villain kidnaps the kid as per and Danny crashes the car and kills her. End.
I love abrupt endings in films.