The original film is effectively Dan’s tragic, traumatic memories of his father’s rampage, without any of the sympathetic context King afforded Jack Torrance in his original story. And the only way Abra could possibly survive is to contact her anonymous telepathic pen pal, Dan, and bring him back into the larger world of the supernatural, where he can finally face his fears – and the legacy of “The Shining” – once and for all.ĭoctor Sleep impeccably recreates scenes from Kubrick’s The Shining, but smartly reframes them as young Danny’s perspective on those shocking events. Led by the aptly-titled Rose the Hat ( Rebecca Ferguson, who does indeed wear a hat) they chance upon a young girl named Abra Stone (newcomer Kyliegh Curran) who shines brighter than anyone else in the world. Their prey is usually small children, and they constantly need a fix. He goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he takes a job working as an orderly at a nursing home, and his uncanny ability to tell which patients are about to die – and his lovely way of guiding them peacefully to their final rest – has earned him the nickname “Doctor Sleep.”īut Dan isn’t the only person in the world with powers, and a group of psychics who kill and feed off the shine of other people are roaming the country. Hitting rock bottom, and only using his “Shining” when the demons from the Overlook come back to haunt him, he eventually finds some solace in a small town where his past is largely forgotten. He was always a powder keg, and the Overlook Hotel lit his long fuse.ĭoctor Sleep picks up decades later, when Danny, or rather “Dan” ( Ewan McGregor), has fallen into the same pattern of substance abuse as his father. There were obvious deviations from the events of the novel, but perhaps the biggest difference is that Kubrick’s interpretation offers little sympathy to Jack Torrance and his personal plight. In both versions, the Torrance family – Jack (Jack Nicholson), Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and Danny (Danny Lloyd) – venture to the Overlook Hotel in the dead of winter and fall prey to supernatural influences, which turn Jack against his family by preying on his weakness for alcohol. Stephen King’s original novel for The Shining was adapted rather loosely into Kubrick’s 1980 film.
Doctor Sleep is a stunning and frightening film about trauma and substance abuse, it’s a worthy successor to The Shining, and as if that weren’t enough, it’s also a complex work of thoughtful film criticism. But not only did Mike Flanagan pull it off, he’s made a masterfully horrifying motion picture in its own right.
The sheer overwhelming gall it must take to direct a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining – as vaunted a horror masterpiece as any committed to celluloid – is probably only measurable in tonnage.
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