Doctor Sleep (2019, Mike Flanagan)

“Running away from myself, I guess.” From the moment Ghost Scatman appeared to dump exposition, we know this is gonna be a big obvious movie. This was my token stinker of the month, which I watched in segments while falling asleep after having watched a proper movie… most of my notes consist of the timecode where I left off, and variations on “movie is so bad.”

“I know that head of yours is like a radio sometimes” – nice True Stories reference. Shining-era flashback actors are recast, and present-day Danny (Ewan McGregor) teams up with his 12-step sponsor (Cliff Curtis of M. Night’s Last Airbender) and a young psychic named Abra. Meanwhile, King turns this into a mini-Stand, the villains also gathering. We get an intro to Rose The Hat’s vampire gang who feeds on shining-kids when Rose (Rebecca Ferguson of the Missions: Impossible) recruits Snakebite Emily Alyn Lind (who was in Enter The Void when she was six, oh my) outside of the Plaza Theater (!) and we meet the others, led by Carel “it is happening again” Struycken, who soon dies of shining-starvation.

Billy dies when our heroes ambush the baddies, killing most of them, then Danny leads Rose to the Overlook to trap her somehow. He chats with Lloyd the bartender doing a mild Jack impression, played by the E.T. kid (another Spielbeg-Kubrick crossover so soon after Ready Player One). Danny blows up the hotel (what, again?) to kill the vengeful ghosts that killed Rose, I guess. Think I heard a Dark Tower reference… definitely noticed one house address was 1980 (ugh). Real TV-movie energy with very talky villains – the actors seem game, so I’ll blame this on King and Flanagan.