In terms of traumatic childhoods, few movie characters have ever had it as bad as Danny Torrance. The young psychic child at the center of The Shining is not only relentlessly preyed upon one winter by the malevolent ghosts of a haunted hotel, but he and his mother are also nearly killed by his ax-wielding father. He experiences so many unimaginable horrors over the span of just a few months that one can’t help but feel both relief and concern for him when The Shining ends.
Danny’s traumatic time at the Overlook Hotel fittingly haunts writer-director Mike Flanagan’s Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep. Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, the film attempts to bring the story of Dan Torrance (played as an adult by Ewan McGregor) to a close. In doing so, it ends up telling a very different tale than its revered predecessor. If The Shining is about the dangers of alcoholism and male rage, then Doctor Sleep is about how children survive abuse in a world that seems intent on tamping them down and stealing their “shine.”
When it was released in 2019, Doctor Sleep underperformed at the box office and divided many of the critics and horror fans who sought it out. In the years since, its fan base has steadily grown, and for good reason. It’s one of the most interesting and ambitious horror sequels in recent memory, and arguably the most underrated of this century. You shouldn’t just take our word for it, though. The film is finally streaming on Max again, which means it’s never been easier to see for yourself what treasures and scares await in Doctor Sleep.
After The Shining, the horrors didn’t stop for Danny
In its first act, Doctor Sleep bounces across nearly 40 years of its protagonist’s life. We watch McGregor’s Dan learn as a child how to lock away the lingering ghosts of the Overlook, then fall into a pit of alcoholism as a young adult, and eventually claw his way toward steady, fragile sobriety as he matures. At the same time, Flanagan tracks the nomadic movements of the True Knot, a cult that routinely tracks down young children who shine like Dan once did, kills them, and then consumes the “steam” released by their psychic powers in order to live longer. The cult is led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), a sultry psychopath whose predatory nature is often just barely hidden by her alluring smile.
Dan and Rose are brought together by Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a young powerful psychic who forms a telepathic friendship with Dan and inadvertently puts herself on Rose’s radar. Doctor Sleep‘s second half, consequently, transforms into a race to protect Abra from Rose and her band of selfish, murderous adults. His efforts to do so force Dan to delve back into the parts of his life he’d tried to close himself off from, and it’s in McGregor’s soft-spoken, weathered performance that the intense sadness permeating Doctor Sleep finds its home. His Dan is a man whose first instinct is to protect himself, but his friendship with Abra makes it difficult for him to do that. In the face of this conflict, Flanagan traps Dan and Abra in a nightmarish, surreal world that is quite literally hungry for them.
Doctor Sleep honors, and distinguishes itself from, The Shining
In that regard, Flanagan’s now well-honed digital, softly lit aesthetic works wonders in Doctor Sleep. The film looks and, thanks to its numerous dissolves and slow fades, moves like a hazy Grimms’ Fairy Tale — one in which Rose the Hat is the Big Bad Wolf, Abra isa Little Red Riding Hood, and Dan is her protective, out-of-his-depth paternal figure. That means Doctor Sleep has a distinctly different look and feel than The Shining, but it fits the sequel’s story better than the latter’s unforgettable style would. The film itself is less abrasively terrifying than its unmatchable predecessor, but Flanagan still finds unease in the hunger of Doctor Sleep‘s villains and, in the case of a mid-movie attack they stage on an unsuspecting young boy (Jacob Tremblay), ruthless and chilling evil.
There exists an infamously large gap between Stephen King’s The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation. Doctor Sleep attempts to bridge that gap, but it’s when it tries to pay more overt homage to Kubrick that Flanagan’s sequel actually struggles. That may be because Doctor Sleep is ultimately more King than Kubrick. Either way, it’s at its best when it is more Flanagan than anything else. Doctor Sleep is at its most striking and powerful whenever the director is employing another one of his trademark, slow pans (nearly all of which conclude with a ghost waiting on the other end) or giving Dan the chance to confront his ghosts. (Flanagan has rarely written a line of dialogue more beautifully frank than when Dan reflects on his and his mother’s life after the Overlook and remarks, “We never wanted to see snow again, so we moved to Florida.”)
The finished film isn’t as frightening as The Shining, but Flanagan built a name for himself first as a horror craftsman, and his ability to quickly ratchet up the tension and wrap his claws around your throat is still on full display in Doctor Sleep. The movie also boasts two unforgettable central performances in McGregor’s quiet turn as Dan and Ferguson’s slinky, deliciously witchy work as Rose the Hat. It is in Ferguson’s seductive, mercenary performance, in fact, that Doctor Sleep finds its own source of evil — one simultaneously more recognizable and not than that of The Shining‘s. The sequel may deal with the supernatural aspects of its story more directly than its predecessor, but it strangely ends up feeling more human than it.
That may be why Doctor Sleep falls short of its parent film’s paralyzing terror, but it’s also what gives it a different feeling than The Shining and a greater capacity for the kind of emotional catharsis that comes out of nowhere and takes your breath away. Maybe that’s just another way of saying that Doctor Sleep really is a Mike Flanagan film through and through. If so, it is no less deserving of your time than anything else he’s made to date.
Doctor Sleep is streaming now on Max.
