STACK #181 Nov 2019

CINEMA

FEATURE

Did you know?

Director Mike Flanagan had to convince

Stephen King that, despite the author’s distaste for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), audiences were more familiar with that version, and largely preferred it to King's own 1997 TV adaptation. As such, Doctor Sleep

had to be a sequel to Kubrick's film and include some direct references to it.

Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat

but was forced to return as he had nowhere else to live. Thereupon a ceiling fell in on his head in a nightmarish scenario involving a roommate. “But I had nowhere to go so I had to stay for another few months where my door would open at night, the phones would ping at night and it was really scary. I eventually got the hell out of there.” Among Doctor Sleep ’s broader strokes

Regardless of King’s personal disapproval of The Shining , McGregor was hesitant to sign on to a sequel of the iconic film. “Doing something that’s associated with a classic, famous movie is always interesting. But if it’s not good, then you don’t want to be a part of that. “So at first there was a trepidation about tackling something that’s linked to The Shining , but then when I read the script I was so impressed, I felt like it was a different kind

something at school, you get totally picked on.” Swedish actress Ferguson – best known for The Greatest Showman and the Mission: Impossible films – was delighted to be cast as the villain. “I was so exhilarated when I read the script; those parts rarely come to me,” she says. “I enjoy watching people like Jessica Chastain do roles like this, but didn’t think it would ever happen for me.” After learning she was cast as Rose the Hat, she began her research in earnest. “I immediately started watching interviews with female serial killers,” she says, eyes glinting. “I find the darker aspects of people fascinating.” Ferguson also became its an addiction or the urge to kill. “But in the case of Rose the Hat, she does it because she loves her family and needs to feed them. It’s done from a place of love, not hate. There’s about nine people in her own family but all the families are dying off because there‘s not enough ‘steam’ or ‘shinea‘ to feed them all.” Dressed in hobo chic as a caravan traveler, Ferguson’s beauty and unlikely attire makes Rose the Hat’s killing urge all the more lethal. “She’s terrifying,” says Curran. “The True Knot is absolutely evil, but it’s conflicting having them as antagonists, because they look like regular people.” obsessed with Ted Bundy. “There’s something very still and also very intelligent about him. That complete passion towards the selfish need of something, whether

of movie. It’s not like we’re trying to remake The Shining . Instead it’s borrowing characters and some of the cinematic language of that film, but it’s much more, and it’s not nearly as claustrophobic as The Shining was.” No stranger to psychic phenomenon, McGregor tells STACK about living in a haunted house during his drama student years. “I was living in Manor Park in London and there was something very strange about that house. I was actually burnt there one night, wearing a robe. I was burnt from out of nowhere. I took my robe

is a notion that if you have a gift that other people don’t understand, then somehow they might suck the life out of that gift; that one must

hide any special abilities for fear somebody could exploit them. Curran certainly feels that way. “I feel like people who have a special gift are squashed in order to fit the normal mold so I think this film speaks out for them.” McGregor concurs: “There’s

M U S T S E E F I R S T

off and the whole back of it was singed – and there was nothing on fire. “But there had been a man who died there in the basement in a fire,” adds the actor, who immediately left for the weekend

a sort of fear of things we don’t fully understand. I think about my kids being at school in Britain, where if you are really good at

Doctor Sleep opens in cinemas on November 7

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