The director’s cut mostly lets things play out less urgently - with more time lingering on young Danny in the beginning, one can practically hear the studio execs screaming “When do we get to Ewan McGregor already?” Abra also gets more backstory, and the narrative is divided into chapters. So why not skip that step? Doctor Sleep’s substitute may not be a 100% impersonation, but while watching the first time I knew absolutely that it was meant to be Nicholson.and completely failed to notice it’s actually Henry Thomas! Because even if a digital Jack Nicholson swap were achieved, we’d inherently know it’s not him.

On another technological topic, I’m delighted that director Mike Flanagan didn’t feel the need to pull a Star Wars digital face replacement for returning characters, and simply cast actors who look enough like the originals to sustain the illusion. Regardless, the movie overall looks hazy and washed in a way that 4K and HDR don’t necessarily enhance much. King Charles Coronation How To Watch It In The U S And When It StartsĤK is maybe not an essential feature on this movie - the colors look both bleached out and hue saturated in a Blu-ray kind of way, though the second time around, watching the director’s cut, I felt like maybe the effect was mimicking a harsh dawn after a night of partying. In writing the book, King was more focused on the idea of rehab, so the villains work better as examples of addicts who won’t try to give up their lethal habit, rather than existential dangers to reformed addict hero Danny, whose own demons are more powerful than the external ones. And when Danny and his friend Billy, who aren’t particularly expert in combat as far as we know, manage to massacre most of Rose’s cohorts with basic shotguns, well, these soul-suckers suddenly seem a lot less dangerous than maybe they should.

But from the monet Rose psychically connects with our young heroine Abra (Kyliegh Curran), it’s clear she’s outmatched on a psychic scale. King’s novels at their best make you wonder how the heroes can possibly prevail, because so many of their attempts to escape or triumph get thwarted, and their foes seem to have thought of everything. The main quibble I have with the movie overall is that Rose simply isn’t a particularly threatening antagonist.

Sequel to the shining book