Rating: 👯👯👯👯👯👯
[TRAILER]

One thing’s for sure, the people who made Doctor Sleep really love The Shining. And who could blame them? Everything from Jack Torrance’s iconic ax-wielding breakdown to the pattern on the Overlook Hotel’s rug makes The Shining feel like being wrapped in a warm blanket that happens to include a psychotic, murderous dad.

But now, 30 years after Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic, filmmaker Mike Flannagan has translated that love into Doctor Sleep, the latest in the current wave of Stephen King adaptations and a canonized sequel to The Shining. I, for one, had no idea that Stephen King had written a sequel to The Shining and definitely didn’t think we needed one. But I guess that’s what you get when It 2 makes $700 million.

Looking back at the original, Danny Torrance’s shining powers don’t really factor into The Shining all that much. Sure, he tips his mom off to his dad’s murderous rampage and summons a heroic Scatman Crothers who proceeds to immediately get killed, but Kubrick’s movie is more about the isolation, frustration, and alcoholism that leads Jack to try and take out his whole family.

Doctor Sleep, by contrast, is all about psychic powers. It seems that just about everyone the adult Dan Torrance encounters has some kind of shining, from the people in the small New Hampshire town he moves to, to the life force-sucking cult chasing after him, to animals he encounters (more on that later).

After 30 years, Dan is dealing with demons new and old, physically battling the ghosts from the Overlook and his own problems with alcohol addiction. When Dan lands in New Hampshire, he eventually finds his purpose, using his shining to help comfort hospice patients before they die. He also begins getting psychic communications from Abra, a young girl with extremely strong shining powers.

Meanwhile, a ragtag cult called the True Knot led by “Rose the Hat” hunts down people with shining abilities, feeding on their “steam,”—a life force that gives the cult members quasi-immortality. She also can turn people with shining powers into what I’ll call steam vampires, making them a part of her cult. Although I’m not sure what the real appeal of this is, since the members of the True Knot seem to be spending eternity living in tents and camper vans. Guess it could be cool if you’re the outdoorsy type.

After Abra gets wise to to True Knot’s existence, Dan (45 years old) and Abra (13 years old 🤔) go on a cross country journey to take down the True Knot before they can feed on Abra’s steam.

It takes a minute (like other recent Stephen King adaptations, this movie is LONG and there is A LOT going on), but once things get going, Doctor Sleep puts you on the edge of your seat and almost stands on its own outside of The Shining. There are some pretty thrilling showdowns between Abra, Rose the Hat, Dan, and the True Knot, and with a wholly new set of villains and challenges thrown at Dan Torrance, it’s easy to forget that this movie is related to The Shining at all. That is, until Dan and Abra end up at The Overlook Hotel.

At this point, Flannagan starts to recreate some of the most iconic scenes from the original, going so far as to mimic some of Kubrick’s most memorable camera angles while recasting Jack and Wendy Torrance. To me, this is a bad idea. My thoughts during the movie’s climax were more focused on how awesome The Shining is rather than on the movie I was actually watching.

In the midst of a compelling adventure, Flannagan instead chose to indulge his obvious affection for Kubrick’s original rather than trying to finish out a narrative that could have gotten away with its own arc.

Escaping the shadow of one of the most iconic horror movies of all time is probably not an easy task, but at the end, it feels like Flannagan didn’t really try. This makes for a disjointed story that feels split between a new and compelling adventure, and literal rips from what Flannagan must consider a better movie than his own.

However, there are some things that Doctor Sleep has that The Shining doesn’t:

Very upsetting scenes of child torture and murder
Fedoras
Diverse casting
An incredibly cute scene stealing cat that HAS THE SHINING.

Yes, at the hospice where Dan works, a very fluffy white cat named Izzy uses his shining powers to go cuddle patients who are going to imminently die. This makes Izzy into one of the cutest specters of death to grace a screen. Izzy is white, fluffy, serene, and deserving of a viral red carpet moment. Let’s get him his own movie immediately.

Heeere’s Ewan: DOCTOR SLEEP takes on the legacy of THE SHINING