Dir. Mike Flanagan (trailer)
Doctor Sleep is a well-crafted horror film that both knows it won't live up to it's predecessor The Shining (directed by legendary auteur Stanley Kubrick), and doesn't try to. It leans into and even recreates some iconic seems from The Shining, but the entire time you know Doctor Sleep is its own film.
Set 30 years after the events of the first film, we meet a grown Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) who is struggling to keep the demons of the Overlook Hotel and at bay. After moving to a small town, Dan begins life anew working as an orderly and helping comfort those in need using his "shining" abilities. He soon becomes connected with a young girl who also has powerful abilities and they communicate through telepathy.
In regular Stephen King fashion, there is also a dark, supernatural side to the story that Dan and the young girl, Abra, must face. A group of vampire-like vagrants who feed on the life source of those who have the "shining", led by a charismatic Rose (Rebecca Ferguson), discover Abra's strength and begin hunting her. Dan is determined to protect Abra the way that Dick Hollarann protected him when he was younger.
While Doctor Sleep in no way lives up the masterful The Shining, it does a great job of continuing the story with fresh characters and pulling the audiences back into the nostalgia of the Overlook Hotel while giving the story a modern twist. This film is also one of the better King adaptations to come out in recent years. I highly recommend this film for those who love character driven, slow burn horror such as Flanagan's 2018 limited Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Recommended for fans of: horror, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Brightburn (2019), Hereditary (2018), mystery/thrillers
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