REVIEW: Doctor Sleep [2019]

We don’t end. I’m not going to lie: seeing Stephen King endorse Mike Flanagan‘s cinematic adaptation of his novel Doctor Sleep worried me. After being so vehemently vocal against Stanley Kubrick‘s changes to The Shining, the film version of the sequel would seemingly need to be religiously faithful to the text for him to laud it. The only way that happens is for it to conversely diverge from Kubrick’s masterpiece instead, rendering a middle ground between them impossible. Either Flanagan wrote and directed a continuation of the movie (hedge maze,…

Read More

REVIEW: Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan [2006]

“This is definitely the wrong way to do this” Had I watched writer/director Mike Flanagan‘s short Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan when it was released in 2006, I might have found myself reacting much differently. Being eight years later and a world post Sinister and The Conjuring success, however, I can’t help feeling underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very well made for its shoestring two-grand budget and does possess a few nicely orchestrated effects via carefully blocked shots and specific jump cuts through time. I…

Read More