Doctor Sleep

A few years ago when Stephen King announced he would be releasing a sequel to The Shining, I was excited. I’ve noted here before that King was my gateway drug to adult fiction. I went from reading Judy Blume to Cujo in my reading evolution, so I’ve always had a soft spot for King. I’m a bit too lazy here to Google for the exact quote, but I remember reading an interview in which he touted the book as a return to horror. In my mind, I seem to remember him using the phrase “balls to the wall horror,” though it’s possible I’m just making that up. I’ve always been a fan of the genre, and while I’d enjoyed King’s non-horror work, my favorites were the early ones, the ones that had truly frightened me: The Shining, The Stand, It. After I’d read Salem’s Lot in the fifth grade, I’d slept with a compendium of Bible stories under my pillow for a week. Not that I knew anything about religion. I wasn’t raised in any denomination and I think the compendium was left over from when my mother was in Catholic school, but I needed something to set my nerves at ease and make sure the vampires wouldn’t float up to my bedroom window and seduce me into letting them in. In the same interview I read, King pointed out that The Shining had scared his readers when they were kids. His new book was real horror, adult horror.

Well, the book was released and I read it. I enjoyed it too. There was just one thing: it wasn’t horror at all, much less “balls to the wall horror” (whatever that means). No, my friends. If we’re delving into genre distinctions, I’m going to have to cry foul and place Doctor Sleep distinctly in the genre to which his recent Mr. Mercedes trilogy belongs and call it a thriller. Now, I’m hesitant to do this to some extent. In the past I’ve noted that thriller is the name highbrow folks give horror when they don’t want to admit that they’ve enjoyed something categorically horror. As far as I’m concerned, both David Fincher’s Seven and Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs are horror films. But…but…Silence of the Lambs is more psychological, I hear the protest. Let’s face it, at its most fundamental level, it’s about the FBI’s pursuit of a man who kidnaps women, starves them and skins them so he can wear that skin as clothing. Nothing about that sounds “thrilling” to me. But, I’ll take a step back here for a moment. What, you might ask, do I think horror is? Well, I suppose to some extent the explanation lies in why I think Doctor Sleep isn’t horror.

1. To begin with the threat has to be indistinct and unknowable to truly instill fear. In Doctor Sleep, King delves into the villain’s mindset. We learn that they weren’t always monsters, that the members of the True Knot were lured in by promises of immortality, but the catch is that they have to feed off people that “shine” to keep that immortality. I believe at one point he likens them to sharks, a different species. And quite honestly, can you blame a shark for needing to feed. I feel like the sections where he delves into the psyche of Rose the Hat actually make me feel empathy for them. Their motives are logical. If they’re a different species can the killing even be said to be murder? Granted it’s not enough to make me route for them, but eliciting sympathy for the devil isn’t a way to make me terrified of him. I mentioned sharks above, and you might be sitting there thinking, well, a shark has to eat, but Jaws was terrifying (and yes, Jaws is a horror movie). But what makes Jaws work as terror is the fact that the shark is unknowable. There’s no psychology in a shark. It’s primal. And the perspective we’re given is that of three men on a boat surrounded by a vast ocean from which the shark could spring at any time. Sure, there are musical cues, but these are peppered throughout and sometimes false (as in they’re not followed by an attack). So even the musical cues might mislead, which creates dread. And this for me is one of the major difference between thriller and horror. Thrills are created by tension and release. Horror is created by continuous dread. That being said, I’d like to return to Doctor Sleep and The True Knot. Their victims are all people who shine, which leads to my second point of why that book wasn’t horror but thriller.

2.  To be truly scared I have to believe in the possibility that this could happen to me. Remember a few paragraphs above, the fifth grade me in bed with Bible stories because I worried the vampires would get me? I was a little older when I read The Exorcist, but William Peter Blatty describes how, prior to Reagan’s possession, she smells smoke and hears strange noises in the house. While I was reading I sat there in bed, sniffing, “Is that smoke?” I wondered. “What was that? Did I just hear something?” By that point, the Bible stories were out of the picture, but I did sleep with the light on for about a week. In The Shining, the ghosts haunting the hotel affect both Danny and his father Jack alike. It’s implied that the hotel wants Danny because he shines, but it’s never stated explicitly from the ghost’s point of view. It feels like everyone’s at risk, and as a reader or film-goer, I have to believe that I’m at risk too to be truly scared. In Doctor Strange, The True Knot preys on people who shine. I don’t shine. So they’re not coming for me. With King’s gift for character I care deeply about what happens to Danny and Abra. I want them to make it out of their predicament unscathed. I want them to defeat The True Knot, and it gets tense at points. I worry about their safety, but again, because I’m never able to put myself in their places, as one who’s hunted because I shine, we’re firmly in thriller territory.

If I got some of the details wrong, I apologize. I read Doctor Sleep right after it came out, so it’s been almost three years. And I don’t have a problem with King writing thrillers. Mr. Mercedes was probably my favorite of his books in years.  But his promise of “balls to the wall horror” was misleading. And it was a further insult to fans to imply that they were only scared of The Shining because they were kids when they read it, and Doctor Sleep was somehow mature adult terror. But that’s okay. I don’t hold grudges and wasn’t insulted for long. I like the fact that his statement got me thinking about what I see as horror. Obviously as I mentioned in previous places that what’s scary is a subjective. I posted this today because it’s Friday the 13th and seems like a good day to analyze all things scary. So if you’ve dropped by and read this, and you’re a fan of horror, let me know. Do you agree or disagree? And if you disagree, tell me why.