My only - minor - gripe is that Flanagan focused his considerable talent on what I consider to be a somewhat mediocre book. It has that special 'King tone' - for lack of a better word - which so rarely survives the Hollywood treatment of his works. The director's cut of DOCTOR SLEEP (which is the only cut I've seen), perfectly captures that aspect of King's writing. So in order for the adaptations to work on screen, it's crucial to retain the warmth and the humanity the writer infuses his protagonists with. Sleep is no exception - are so immersive because they're usually less about the horror itself and much more about the journeys he sets his characters on in confronting that horror, the world they inhabit and the people they meet along the way - and the strong bonds and friendships they forge. He's the rare director adapting a story by the writer who gets that it's not the supernatural, not the gory thrills or creeping chills that make those books so immersive and so well loved (though of course those are elements that we King fans also greatly enjoy): it's the meticulous worldbuilding and the deeply human characters. Now the reason why those two films work so well is actually quite simple: like Frank Darabont and Rob Reiner before him, Flanagan gets that the most intriguing aspect of King's stories is not the horror. For a director to achieve this is a rare feat - as any Stephen King fan can sadly attest to after dozens of mediocre to downright terrible adaptations over the last four decades - and what's even more impressive is that it marks the second time Flanagan managed to pull this off, since he already knocked it out of the park with his Netflix adaptation of King's previously considered to be unfilmable novel GERALD'S GAME. As far as Stephen King adaptations go, Mike Flanagan's DOCTOR SLEEP undoubtedly has to count among the small - but distinct - group of excellent ones.

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