Mike Flanagan has had an incredible few years, racking up critical and financial hit after hit on both the big and small screens. Flanagan's Midnight Mass has been a huge conversation since its release, and fans enjoying both the series and that conversation owe it to themselves to seek out Doctor Sleep immediately.
Midnight Mass released on September 24th, where it swiftly accrued a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and enjoyed a great deal of positive coverage. The series is the first of Flanagan's Netflix shows to be entirely original, as the director often works in adaptation. Flanagan has adapted novelists such as Shirley Jackson, Henry James, and of course, Stephen King.
Directing Doctor Sleep was a Herculean undertaking, the fact that the film got made at all is surprising. The film is an adaptation of the 2013 Stephen King novel of the same name and a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror opus The Shining. Kubrick's adaptation of King's 1977 novel famously strayed from the source in ways that infuriated the author. The novel Doctor Sleep is a sequel to the novel The Shining, which means this film needed to be a sequel to both of the inextricably different stories from wildly different creators and a good film all its own. Against all odds, it completely works, thanks entirely to the work of Mike Flanagan.
Doctor Sleep is the story of Daniel Torrance, the now-adult son of Jack Torrance. Dan is still haunted by the nightmares he encountered at the Overlook Hotel as a boy, and by the demon in a bottle left to him by his late father. For most of his life, Dan's psychic gift served only to traumatize him, but it suddenly involves him in a desperate struggle for the life of an innocent girl. An ancient threat emerges, under the guise of harmless strangers that threatens to unleash terrible vengeance upon an unsuspecting public. Dan must undergo violence and horrors as his fate drags him inexorably back to the Overlook to face the evil of his past and the uncertainty of the future.
Mike Flanagan's particular style is all over Doctor Sleep, even though it is an adaptation touched by both of the creators who made its predecessors. Flanagan's works are often overwhelmingly grim, intensely dramatic, and built around sincere themes. The ghosts and monsters of Flanagan's works are terrifying, but the true horror is almost always in the human struggles of family or the consumptive effects of trauma. The worlds he creates are full of people who are struggling with the past, trying to find a purpose in a world that they're scared to make worse. Flanagan's style is on full display in both Doctor Sleep and Midnight Mass.
These two works take very similar approaches to horror. Flanagan eschews jump scares in favor of more subtle and atmospheric techniques. Long, flowing cinematography, filling frames with detail that often hides a secret or two for discerning viewers. The horror often gives way to violence, typically normal humans defending themselves against impossible odds with nothing but their wits and whatever they can lay hands on. The violence is not overwhelming, but when it appears, it is stunningly well realized.
The biggest similarity between Doctor Sleep and Midnight Mass comes in the form of both works' ostensible heroes, Riley Flynn and Dan Torrance. Men haunted with the literal ghosts of their past, struggling to find stable lives in a world that seems to have no place for them. Both men are recovering alcoholics, even spending time in the same recovery program, Alcoholics Anonymous. Both men discover a nightmarish hidden evil and gradually put themselves in greater danger in attempts to help the good people around them. The two men are startlingly similar and they follow fairly similar paths as the story unfolds.
Where Midnight Mass directly tackles faith, Doctor Sleep is about inheritance. Doctor Sleep is a story of generations paving the way for those that will replace them, and what they leave in their wake. The new try their best to do better than the old, Dan speaks of his drinking problem as the only way he had to connect with his father, it's in his blood. He is haunted by his father's demons, perhaps worse even than those he met at the Overlook, and still he tries to be a good example for those that may walk in his shoes. The townspeople of Midnight Mass endure in their faith despite all that tears them apart, the hero of Doctor Sleep persists even as his spirit is dragged through his past.
Though Flanagan's works are grim, he still manages to find the true heart in the horror he commits to the screen. Midnight Mass is a gripping nightmare that drags its audience through a maze of painful faith. Doctor Sleep is the bittersweet story of a man facing his past for the benefit of the future. The stories definitely share some details, but their powerful theming and brilliant direction are what really link the two beautiful tales.