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Mike Flanagan ’s “Doctor Sleep” connects the visions of Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick with his own style, made most popular in Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House.” It is an often effective blend of the three as it’s forced to pay more homage to Kubrick’s vision than King was in his book, which served purely as a sequel to a novel that the filmmaker had drastically changed when he adapted it in 1980. Flanagan was tasked with making a sequel to a film that stays loyal to a book that ignores the changes made in the first movie. That ain't easy. Different characters are in different places at the end of the book and film versions of " The Shining ," and Flanagan has to tie the two together. For example, King’s original book ends with the explosion of the Overlook Hotel. We all know that Kubrick’s “The Shining” does not. And while one can sometimes feel Flanagan struggling to satisfy both King and Kubrick fans when he really should be trusting his own vision, he’s talented enough to pull off this difficult blend of legacies.

After a prologue that reveals a young Danny Torrance figuring out how to control his “shining” powers and capturing the ghosts that haunt him, we’re re-introduced to an adult Dan, played by Ewan McGregor . Detailed a bit more in the book, he’s basically using alcoholism to hide his trauma, and he reaches rock bottom when he takes money from a single mother with whom he just had a coke-addled one-night stand. He jumps a bus to New Hampshire, where he tries to find stability, joins AA, and makes a friend named Billy ( Cliff Curtis ), before getting a job at a hospice, where his shining power allows him to help people on the edge of death cross over. There’s a respectful solemnity to these scenes that emerge from Flanagan’s empathetic and emotional side. The idea that someone who learned through trauma that ghosts are real could comfort those wondering what happens after death is one that Flanagan takes seriously.

While Dan is earning the nickname that gives the film its title, we’re introduced to two new characters. Rose the Hat ( Rebecca Ferguson ) leads a roving group of powerful creatures who aren’t exactly invulnerable but have found a way to be immortal. They call themselves the True Knot, and they travel the country looking for children who “shine,” stealing their essence and feeding off of it. The idea that there are forces in this world that thrive off pain and misery, selfishly living off the greatness found within others, is a very King creation, and Flanagan doesn’t shy away from the grisliness here. In one of the film’s most disturbing scenes, the True Knot kidnaps a boy ( Jacob Tremblay ) and brutally murders him—after all, torture makes the steam he releases that much sweeter.

Connecting the Rose and Dan arcs is the character of Abra Stone (newcomer Kyliegh Curran ), who is so powerful that she literally draws the attention of the True Knot and finds a way to psychically communicate with Dan. The True Knot could feed on her for generations or make her one of their own. Abra finds her way to Dan, and the two draw Rose and her team into a final showdown, which everyone who’s ever seen a movie knows can only happen in one place.

Flanagan and his team wisely don’t choose to visually emulate “The Shining” for most of “Doctor Sleep,” producing a film that looks a lot more like an episode of “Hill House” than the Kubrick original. The film has arguably too many close-ups and a bit too much of a cool gray/blue color palette, but these elements add to its eerie, twilight feel. Flanagan’s best work has a way of blending the emotional and the supernatural—things go bump in the hearts and minds of his characters as much as in the darkened hallways—and that makes him a good fit for a book that needed an emotional touch to work as a film. “Doctor Sleep” is often at its best when Flanagan is allowed to flourish and play away from both the source material and the Kubrick film. When he returns to the Kubrick vision, including actors playing iconic roles from the movie, it sometimes feels like “Doctor Sleep” is in a very big shadow.

The best thing about Flanagan’s film by some stretch is the work by Rebecca Ferguson. The director of “Gerald’s Game” and “Hush” proves again to be a very capable filmmaker when it comes to directing actresses, getting Ferguson’s career-best work to date. She walks away with the film as a presence that’s somehow both captivating and terrifying. Her take on Rose the Hat turns a thin character on the page into a great villain, someone who uses her good looks and charisma to disguise her evil intentions. McGregor isn’t so lucky, sometimes falling victim to a source material that never really gave us much of a character, while Curran is an engaging young actress, at her best when she’s selling Abra’s understandable confidence. I liked how Abra isn’t just a scared victim to be rescued by Dan. She needs help, but she also knows she’s a badass.

What’s going to be most controversial about “Doctor Sleep” is the final act, when, slight spoilers, Flanagan and his team find themselves in the halls of Kubrick’s film. And make no mistake—it is Kubrick’s film in which they’re playing and not King’s book. Some fans of “The Shining” will consider this sacrilegious, some will find it playful and nostalgic. I’m in the middle. I think Flanagan goes back to the Kubrick well 2-3 too many times, but the changes he makes to the final third of King’s book are smart and effective. He twists King’s sequel into something that’s less about empowerment and more about overcoming trauma, reclaiming the darkest moments of your life. He makes major changes to the source material and comes out illustrating again what a confident, interesting filmmaker he can be. Kind of like someone else did four decades ago.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Rated R for disturbing and violent content, some bloody images, language, nudity and drug use.

152 minutes

Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance

Kyliegh Curran as Abra Stone

Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat

Zahn McClarnon as Crow Daddy

Bruce Greenwood as Dr. John

Carel Struycken as Grampa Flick

Emily Alyn Lind as Snakebite Andi

Jacob Tremblay as Bradley Trevor

Mike Flanagan

Writer (based on the novel by)

Stephen King

Cinematographer

Michael Fimognari
The Newton Brothers

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Doctor Sleep Reviews

Ewan McGregor delivers a solid performance and Rebecca Fergusson is superb in a role that develops like a photograph, even though it feels like a cookie-cutter villain at the onset...

Full Review | May 15, 2024

Doctor Sleep is a dense dance of nostalgic supernatural horror mixed with a deep psychological examination of how we can rise from the sins of the past.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Apr 4, 2024

Mike Flanagan took the impossible task of balancing both Stephen King's The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's cinematic adaptation, and successfully nailed pretty much everything regarding the connection between the main stories.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 24, 2023

…Flanagan and King have repurposed many of the familiar elements as part of a new and very different story, one that riffs neatly on the original property while going off in a fresh direction…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2022

The movie has a hefty running time but it’s in large part due to the story never taking shortcuts and offering up plenty of rich character details.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 20, 2022

Flanagan does a respectful job both following up Kubrik's work, and referencing it. The 40 years between films give the audience distance, though did I really need to learn what happened to Danny Torrance?

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 12, 2022

Doctor Sleep manages to do the impossible by somehow remaining faithful to both King's books and Kubrick's film, yet in a way that creates a unique amalgam of both sources, producing something altogether new.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 23, 2022

An entertaining tribute to a monumental thing. It's a bowl of colorful fruits laid out in front of a forever monolith

Full Review | Jan 10, 2022

That Doctor Sleep is even passable is amazing. That it's quite good is a small miracle.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 12, 2021

Flanagan opted against the rather cheap jump-scares that plague so many other horror films these days. Instead, there's a quiet dread behind what Rose and company do.

Full Review | Aug 5, 2021

A Kubrickian xerox with soul and dark beauty.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2021

Doctor Sleep often feels like a tribute to The Shining but brings enough of its own ideas on the effects of childhood trauma and the lingering pain of a shattered family to add richness and originality to the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 31, 2021

As a reconciliation between Kubrick and King, Doctor Sleep doesn't quite work, but as a dark horror fantasy, there's a lot to love.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jan 29, 2021

The slow clap here goes to Mike Flanagan who wrote, directed and edited the film ... The book, like most of King's works, is a beast, and Flanagan, unlike many before and surely many after him, does not let the beast get the better of him.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2021

A chilling, gripping adaptation with some terrific performances and several standout sequences. It doesn't quite stick the landing thanks to an overreliance on replicating what's come before, but it's still well worth checking out.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2021

Doctor Sleep is a good psychological thriller with touches of terror, a bit of drama, and covered with a dreamlike veneer that allows its director to show off his staging in several sequences. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 15, 2021

Flanagan has done the impossible by delivering a film that works both as a sequel to King's novel and Kubrick's adaptation, but even without that clarifier it can still be considered a modern classic.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 30, 2020

There's simply no subtlety in the horror.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 7, 2020

Really slow but captivating at the same time.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 25, 2020

Doctor Sleep serves as a thought provoking and logical progression diving into generational traumas and owning your gifts before it's too late.

Full Review | Oct 25, 2020

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‘Doctor Sleep’ Review: A Duller ‘Shining’

In this Stephen King adaptation, Ewan McGregor fights old and new demons.

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By A.O. Scott

“Doctor Sleep,” Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of the novel by Stephen King , catches up with Danny Torrance, who as a child was terrorized by demons and his own father at a spooky Rocky Mountain hotel.

That was in “The Shining,” published by King in 1977 and filmed by Stanley Kubrick in a movie released in 1980 . The new film, depending on how you look at it, is a sequel, an update, a corrective or a disaster. King was never a fan of Kubrick’s cold, meticulous gothic, which has nonetheless gathered a sturdy cult following. Flanagan, while hewing more closely to the novelist’s ideas about evil, innocence and addiction, pays tribute to some of Kubrick’s visual signatures, especially in flashbacks that take grown-up Dan (as he’s called now) back to the Overlook. He remembers a dad (Henry Thomas) with darting Jack Nicholson eyebrows and a mother (Alex Essoe) with Shelley Duvall saucer eyes.

Dan, played by a subdued Ewan McGregor, has had a hard time of it. After his mother’s death, he spirals into alcoholism, eventually finding solace and sobriety in a small New Hampshire town. He also finds a job, as an orderly in a home for the elderly, and a friend, named Billy (Cliff Curtis). The ghouls who used to haunt him have been put away, thanks to a mental trick he learns from the ghost of his old pal Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly, in the role played by Scatman Crothers in “The Shining.”)

Meanwhile — well, there’s a whole lot of meanwhile. In print, “Doctor Sleep” runs to 531 pages, which is fairly compact by King’s recent standards. This screen adaptation feels like a clumsy hybrid. It’s a little too long and winding to work as a feature film, especially in the horror genre, and might have worked better as a limited series, with a little more room for the many characters who populate its grimly imagined American landscape. Its slow pacing and diffuse suspense make the experience more like a book on tape than anything else, in spite of a few lively performances.

Dan joins forces with a young girl named Abra (Kyliegh Curran, making an impressive film debut), who lives in another part of New Hampshire and who has gifts similar to his. Though if his extrasensory abilities shine, hers blaze like stadium lights. Her powers attract the attention of a predatory cabal known as the Knot, who travel the country in a caravan looking for psychically talented children to torture and kill. Their leader is Rose (Rebecca Ferguson), a blue-eyed seductress in a Babadook hat.

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Film Review: ‘Doctor Sleep’

Stephen King's 2013 sequel to 'The Shining' gets turned into a film that's long and prosaic but also creepy and scary: a tale of ghosts, cults, and child murder that revisits the Overlook Hotel of Stanley Kubrick's film.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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On the face of it, making a sequel to “ The Shining ” does not sound like a promising idea. Stephen King ’s original novel, which was published in 1977, remains one of his greatest (it’s not a tale that needs to be messed with). And in the 40 years since Stanley Kubrick ’s spooky cerebral film version of “The Shining” came out, the movie has come to define the look and mystique of this story in our culture. Nearly every aspect of Kubrick’s visualization of the Overlook Hotel and its live-in demons — the corridors with their ’70s-suburban-acid-trip orange-and-brown hexagon carpeting, the Diane Arbus twins in their teal party dresses, the Hawaiian Punch blood splashing out of the Navajo Deco elevators, the lobby with its adobe walls and high-ceilinged wagon-wheel chandeliers, the somnambulant British caretaker talking in the bathroom in hypnotic dream time, the rotting-old-lady specter emerging from behind the shower curtain of Room 237 — is as iconic as anything that exists in contemporary screen horror.

Reviewed at AMC 34th St., New York, Oct. 24, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 151 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release of a Warner Bros., Intrepid Pictures, Vertigo Entertainment release. Producer: Jon Berg. Executive producers: Akiva Goldsmith, Stephen King, Roy Lee, D. Scott Lumpkin, Trevor Macy, Kevin McCormick, Philip Waley.
Crew: Director, screenplay: Mike Flanagan. Camera (color, widescreen): Michael Fimognari. Editor: Mike Flanagan. Music: The Newton Brothers.
With: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Carl Lumbly, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Brue Greenwood, Jocelin Donahue, Alex Essoe, Cliff Curtis, Jacob Tremblay.

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Doctor Sleep Review

Don’t overlook this shining sequel..

Doctor Sleep vs. The Shining: Side-By-Side Comparison

Young Danny Torrance - The Shining (L), Doctor Sleep (R)

When it’s focusing on the new things it brings to the table, Doctor Sleep is consistently terrifying, visually impressive, and soulful in equal measure. Though it may get a little heavy-handed and tonally confused in its reverence for Stanley Kubrick’s Shining in the homestretch, the vast majority of the film succeeds in using the Torrance family’s pain to tell a story of coming to terms with the past. No matter which version of The Shining you prefer, fans of both will be finding things to enjoy about Doctor Sleep forever. And ever. And ever. And ever.

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‘doctor sleep’: film review.

THR review: In 'Doctor Sleep,' Mike Flanagan's big-screen follow-up to 'The Shining,' Ewan McGregor stars as little Danny Torrance all grown up.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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It doesn’t have Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick or even much of the Overlook Hotel, but Rebecca Ferguson and other good actors provide some shine of their own in Doctor Sleep , a drawn-out and seldom pulse-quickening follow-up to The Shining that still has enough going on to forestall any audience slumber. The vast army of Stephen King fans alone ensures a good commercial launch for this well-appointed Warner Bros. release, which in terms of scares and jolts is pretty mild by contemporary horrorfilm standards.

Has it really been 39 years since Kubrick’s elaborate, fastidious, popular but critically divisive adaptation of King’s third novel, of which the author himself was its most vociferous critic? In the interim there has been a poorly received 1997 four-hour miniseries adaptation on ABC, as well as a warmly embraced 2016 operatic version. King himself again took up the story of Danny Torrance (son of Jack and Wendy), the little boy blessed/cursed with unusual psychic powers, in his 2013 novel Doctor Sleep, an immediate No. 1 best-seller, indicating a continuing public interest in this flawed fellow whose life has never been easy.

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What Is Cinema?

Doctor Sleep Works Best When It Stops Worrying and Forgets Stanley Kubrick

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to young Danny Torrance after he and his mother survived their terrifying, snow-bound ordeal at the Overlook Hotel, forced to dodge the crippling cold of the Colorado Rockies, the whims of vicious ghosts, and the psychotically unpredictable ax-swing of alcoholic patriarch Jack Torrance, Mike Flanagan ’s new film Doctor Sleep is here to deliver a few answers.

Some things, you might have guessed—the alcoholism, for example. Based on Stephen King ’s 2013 sequel to The Shining , Doctor Sleep posits that the long aftermath of murderous trauma, to say nothing of a life beset with mysterious psychic gifts, is necessarily riddled with struggle. Danny ( Ewan McGregor ), now middle-aged, is a drifter: violent, desperate, fighting an ongoing battle with addiction, his is a life lived in the shadow of his father’s demons. And of Danny’s own dark secrets: the ghouls from the Overlook which, through the guidance of a spectral old friend, he has to learn over time to compartmentalize into psychological lock boxes, or else those spirits, ever attracted to the hot, white light of the boy’s powers, might continue to haunt him.

Doctor Sleep tracks Danny eight years into his recovery, when he’s posted up in New Hampshire and, thanks to a friend and fellow recovering addict, found a job as an orderly in an elderly home. There, among patients who will all pass on sooner rather than later, he’s nicknamed “Doctor Sleep,” for the comfort he brings people as they’re passing on. He still has some of that shine , as he once called it, but he mostly represses it—until.

Doctor Sleep is a horror movie, but what’s immediately striking is its sudden breadth, it’s humble resistance to the usual perils and thrills of blockbuster. It’s refreshing. This is a story that feels larger than it is, in part because this story takes the shine and does something with it, reveals it for the tenuous, impermanent, vulnerable force that it is. There’s a 15-year-old girl named Abra Stone ( Kyliegh Curran ), for example, who also shines—more powerfully than probably anyone else—and whose powers eventually prove necessary to protect.

And then there’s the True Knots, led by Rose the Hat ( Rebecca Ferguson ). They shine too, but they also consume the shine of others, which extends their life spans—at least for as long as they can keep up the hunt. They’re beholden to the shine, in other words; they need it. Perhaps one of the most telling details in Flanagan’s movie is the way they consume it: crowding around the bodies of their young victims like junkie vampires, torturing their prey bit by bit to spook the shine out, then slurping it up—shine, exhaled from the body, is called steam —in thrillingly huge gulps. It’s a little freaky, maybe even a little fun, verging as it does on the macabre mix of bloodlust and club drug eroticism.

Flanagan, aided by King’s text, gives these three strands a lot of room to breathe. He’s lately made a name for himself as an effective director of horror for adults, films that cut down on the kitsch without leaning into prestige to feel overly serious. It works. Oculus , Ouija: Origin of Evil , and, most recently, two well-regarded Netflix projects— The Haunting of Hill House , based on Shirley Jackson’s classic novel, and Gerald’s Game , another King adaptation—all share a pleasant maturity, though maybe they often come off at times like the oldest child, the “adult” in the room.

Those are good movies. Doctor Sleep , for its eventual flaws, is the first Flanagan work to really make me take notice of his adventurous sense of patience, his insistence on character detail and a lingering gaze that makes trauma feel impossible not to confront. There are at least three bravura sequences here—a True Knot murder, a shoot-out, and a scene of night-time astral projection that among other things proves that the quiet uncanniness of Twin Peaks: The Return has already proven influential—worth the price of admission, real spine-tingling scenarios that work not because they manage to scare you, but because for all their dread, you can’t predict how or even whether the other shoe will drop. When it does, it rarely lands where you expect.

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Dread, not jump scares, are Flanagan’s bag. Well, and the occasional dose of mortifying body horror, as anyone who remembers that scene in Gerald’s Game can attest. (Some unfortunate news for your sleep cycle: there’s a callback to that moment in Doctor Sleep. ) It’s all largely for the better—but then we run into the movie’s central problem.

Anyone seeing Doctor Sleep has to expect that it will, in some way, deal with The Shining . Not the plot: the movie, which in addition to being one of the best of its kind is also demonstrably influential—and, infamously, disliked by Stephen King. Flanagan has said that he wanted to find a way to reconcile Kubrick’s film with the vision of King, who was famously no fan of that adaptation, while also doing justice to the King sequel and, one imagines, his own vision. (On the subject of the previous film, King has said that he long found Kubrick’s adaptation too cold. “We’re looking at these people, but they’re like ants in an ant hill,” he said recently . “Aren’t they doing interesting things, these little insects.”)

I’m more than merely a fan of Kubrick’s adaptation: I think it’s essential. I also think it’s too familiar to pull the stunt Flanagan pulls here: recreating entire segments from Kubrick’s film but casting them with other, less persuasive actors, and even worse, setting the climax of his movie back at the Overlook. Kubrick’s masterful style, his obsessive calculation, are built into the very fiber of The Shining —meaning there’s no way around the fact that anyone doing less exacting work will somehow fall short of an ideal that they quite frankly shouldn’t have invoked in the first place.

The segments of Doctor Sleep that hew close, even vaguely close, to The Shining are uniformly unsuccessful. They’re also in the minority. The rest of what’s here feels sensitive and thorough, well-made, intriguing to look at, pleasurable to watch. Flanagan’s work never makes me lose my mind with excitement; I’m not usually impressed in the moment. His is a body of work that benefits from hindsight and reflection—unexpected pleasures for a horror movie, which must be why they feel so welcome.

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Doctor Sleep Is a Horror Film of Messy Pleasures

Doctor Sleep is full of indelible imagery — bodies made bloody, an endless hedge maze dappled with snow, a woman gliding across the night sky shot through with stars. And its pleasures don’t end there: A score by the Newton Brothers thumps like an errant heartbeat. The actors sparkle with chemistry. At times, its aesthetic and thematic pursuits click into place and the film sings at a mournful register as it charts the generational trauma and addiction of Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor). But Doctor Sleep proves stronger in parts than as a whole.

Throughout its 151-minute runtime, there’s the distinct feeling that something is missing from this film, that a slew of miscalculations made it fun to watch but not necessarily profound. Doctor Sleep messily attempts to braid together an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name while existing on the same cinematic continuum as Stanley Kubrick’s icy and magnificent The Shining . The latter’s outsize legacy inevitably looms large.

Here, Dan Torrance is a haunted man. Not just by the lingering ghosts he encountered at the Overlook Hotel, but by the trauma of his father’s influence — a man he only understands when giving in to darkness and rage. When we meet him, he’s homeless and fiercely alcoholic. He only comes out of this haze after crossing paths with Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), who ushers him into Alcoholics Anonymous and a more stable life. But our pasts have a way of catching up with us. When Dan makes a connection to the middle-school age, fellow psychic powerhouse Abra (Kyleigh Curran) — who is being hunted by the cult True Knot, which feeds on people with “shining” powers in a bid for near-immortality — he finds himself returning to the site of his childhood trauma.

Doctor Sleep is perhaps trying to do too much at once. It aims to both broaden and hearken to the world of The Shining ; adapt King’s novel and ethos; create a villain with shadowy mythos in the form of Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), the leader of the True Knot cult; create a quasi-coming-of-age story for Abra; and speak eloquently to the ways childhood traumas mutate into adult vices within Dan’s storyline. The film can never balance all these pursuits. But even though there is a shaggy quality to the way the subplots are sewn together, the film’s initial horror-picture structure makes way for a handful of wondrous sequences helmed by writer, director, and editor Mike Flanagan. Flanagan undoubtedly understands and cares for horror as a genre. His film is light on jump scares, preferring to mount dread with agape doors, ghosts creeping through inky darkness, blood splatters. The best sequences uphold the architecture of the characters’ minds, in which hedge mazes, cathedrals, and darkened childhood bedrooms become battlegrounds for power and control.

Early in the film we’re given a window into how the True Knot cult operates, when they target a young baseball player named Bradley (Jacob Tremblay). They tie him down in a deserted factory lot as he emits cries for help that will never be answered. Rose cuts him first gently, then savagely, because as she says with casual delight, it purifies the “steam” they feed on from psychic children. The cult is feral, even vampiric as they feed. Their eyes glow a phosphorescent blue, limbs intertwining in ecstasy as they ritualistically kill then bury Bradley, while Abra psychically watches what happens in stark terror. It’s this death that turns her character onto the path that leads her to meet Dan as she demonstrates an enviable strength in the face of horror. The moments that center on Rose and her crew render them both creepy and strangely seductive, but the film is at its best when focusing on a more intimate form of horror — the horror of reliving the sins of our parents, and grappling with trauma and addiction along the way. Dan, in particular, is effectively forced to contend with his father’s legacy, whether that be through conversations with the ghost of Dick Hallorann (an excellent Carl Lumbly) or bearing witness to a dead woman and her baby.

Elements of the film’s climax feel a touch silly and overwrought; one scene, in which Dan speaks to the spirit of his father, Jack Torrance (played by Henry Thomas, doing a Jack Nicholson impression), feels distractingly uncanny. Outright recreations of scenes from The Shining, and the flashbacks to a young Danny after his Overlook escape, feel similarly jarring in their familiarity. I imagine your impression of it all will vary depending on your affinity toward Kubrick’s masterwork. Still, much of the pleasure of the film comes from the dynamics between major characters and the ways the new actors bring them to life. Ferguson is living dynamite. Scenes burn with a slinky, sexily malevolent energy whenever she’s onscreen. She’s the best kind of villain — seductive and unnerving in equal measure — who wears athleisure and a top hat (courtesy of costume designer Terry Anderson). Curran is an immediately thrilling presence with a bright, spiky energy that plays off McGregor particularly well. McGregor is appropriately haunted as Dan, feeling the most impactful at the story’s beginning, in moral and emotional gray areas.

But I’m not sure McGregor or Flanagan appropriately answer the questions that flutter just beneath the surface of the film: Is it possible to escape the tragedies our parents handed down to us? How do childhood sorrows mutate and fester into adulthood? Can we ever make peace with our pasts? The film aims in its closing moments to be bittersweet yet hopeful. Instead, it has an unintended, even dour messaging about the cost of escaping your past and whether that’s even possible in life. Doctor Sleep could probably never fully stand on its own, and perhaps it’s not meant to. It’s a horror film with messy pleasures if you’re able to meet it on its own level.

movie review
doctor sleep
stephen king
the shining
ewan mcgregor
mike flanagan

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Doctor Sleep takes The Shining and puts a hat on a hat

So much of Doctor Sleep is silly, but there really is so much. It's a horror film set in 1980 Florida, no, 2011 New Jersey, no, 2019 New Hampshire, now Ohio, on to Colorado. The bad guys are ghosts. The bad guys are trailer-park telepaths devouring kidsouls for family orgies. The bad guy is alcoholism. Dan Torrance ( Ewan McGregor ) flees a quarter-century hangover to a kindly New England burg called Frazier. There is a tourist attraction in the square, a miniaturized version of the city called Teenytown. Dan winds up volunteering at Teenytown, and I don't know why I'm telling you this, Teenytown doesn't have anything to do with anything. It's just there, and it's wonderful. Teenytown. Teenytown.

Dan is a middle-aged trauma case, chasing away demons real and paternal with a lifetime of booze. Newly sober, he gets a job at the local hospice, where an adorable cat senses whenever a patient is about to die. Much like the cat, Dan has a sixth sense. He has a special name for his supernatural power, and that name is: Sorry, going a different direction here, I have to mention 15-year-old Andi (Emily Alyn Lind), who steals wallets from pedophiles and mind-controls them toward dangerous confessions. Andi meets Rose the Hat ( Rebecca Ferguson ), a mysterious woman with a terrible hat. All will connect to Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a teenager overflowing with mystical energy, who spends eight years talking to Dan through a chalkboard wall.

That's Abra, as in "cadabra." What fun names are! Rose leads a whole band of superpowered nomads, including Madge Ick, Spellon Mee, and Whit Chiznwizards. No, no, no, but Rose does have a trusted lieutenant who goes by Crow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon). His hat is okay, still not great. Their whole crew has turned nigh-immortal from devouring the souls of children who have the shining. Or maybe not souls. When the superchildren die, they release steam, and the bad guys breathe in the steam, and their eyes glow, and then they make out with each other. It's precisely how Juul works. Right, and yes: There are shinings, plural!

Doctor Sleep adapts the 2013 book by horror legend Stephen King , which carried young Danny Torrance from the 1977 novel The Shining into cruel contemporary adulthood. King's original haunted-hotel novel was made into a 1980 film by Stanley Kubrick, which — important to admit this — is one of my favorite movies ever. (I like the book fine, but it wouldn't crack my King Top 25.) The author has often stated his profound dislike for the feature adaptation, and his sequel ignored Kubrick's plot alterations.

Now, writer-director Mike Flanagan has turned his own Doctor Sleep adaptation into an attempt to reconcile the twin Shining s. He recreates some of Kubrick's famous visuals. The soundtrack integrates elements of the nails-tickling-your-grave musical score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Etkin. Carl Lumbly does a decent Scatman Crothers impression as Dick Hallorann, once young Danny's mentor, now grown-up Dan's Jiminy Cricket, unfortunately. Alex Essoe has a few scenes as Danny's mom Wendy, and I mean no disrespect, but Shelley Duvall is the only Wendy, and that's that.

Flanagan already made one Stephen King film, 2017's Gerald's Game . Last year, he became a household name with the Netflix miniseries Haunting of Hill House , a nominal Shirley Jackson adaptation with visible King influences. He's the rare American horror director who remembers that the world has more colors than dark gray. And he overpopulates Doctor Sleep with juicy supporting turns. McClarnon, an awesome figure in Fargo , is making a fine career for himself as the henchman who should be the boss. Lind is great in a role that seems crucial and then simply isn't. Dan's best friend Billy is played by Cliff Curtis, and Cliff Curtis is so swell that he even made the 35th hour of Hobbs and Shaw almost bearable.

But Doctor Sleep is a mess. It's way too long, clashing somber sobriety with loony cheap thrills. The Shining homages turn shameless and cheap. The jumpscares are more funny than scary. Dan is a problem. McGregor used to be such a livewire performer, but he's frozen stolid here. It's admirable to explore how family alcoholism and a childhood history of abuse can still affect a man forty years past his murderdad. But the language of pop therapy can make for deadly dialogue. At one point, Dan introduces himself by saying, no joke, "I'm running away from myself," whoof. There's a bit of spark in McGregor's pairing with no-nonsense Curran, but the diffuse plot of Doctor Sleep keeps the principals separate for a very long time.

Meanwhile, Ferguson, so great in the recent Mission: Impossible s, is trying 10 kinds of something. Rose lives in an RV overdecorated in a style I can only describe as "rugpunk." In a truly stunning setpiece, she astral-projects herself across the country, floating through the stratosphere into Abra's bedroom. Rose is occasionally fun without ever being scary. And Doctor Sleep never really makes a cohesive argument for why this movie about centuries-old telepath kidkillers is also a Shining sequel, even when the action leads back to the Overlook Hotel.

Maybe Flanagan's pinpoint recreations will astound you. All the homage left me cold. Kubrick's film has a chilly reputation even among fans, but it's an achingly humane freakout, with Duvall and Danny Lloyd barely breathing from the perpetual tension of living with Jack Nicholson 's dear old ragedrunk dad. For all his revisions, Kubrick picked up on a primal fear in King's novel: The Torrance family is a biosphere of terror even before they get to the hotel. Doctor Sleep aims for redemption — it's Feel-Good Horror — but the scary hotel is just a scary hotel now. And not even so scary, when you've seen it all before.

Conversely, I've never seen a gang of psionic cultists vape infanticide stream as a life-extending aphrodisiac. So there are still new ideas. C+

Doctor Sleep (2019)

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Doctor sleep, common sense media reviewers.

Well-made "Shining" sequel has intense violence toward kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

In a pretty simple case of good versus evil, chara

Danny starts out as an alcoholic who fights with p

Children in peril, screaming in panic/pain, childr

Fully naked elderly female ghost (more scary than

A few uses of "f--k," "s--t," "bulls--t," "bitch,"

Mention of Netflix. Coca-Cola vending machine show

The main character is an alcoholic. He drinks shot

Positive Messages

In a pretty simple case of good versus evil, characters risk their lives to face difficult odds.

Positive Role Models

Danny starts out as an alcoholic who fights with people, sleeps with random partners, wakes up in strange places, etc. But because Billy goes out of his way to help, Danny gets a job helping others, joins AA, and -- eventually -- risks his life to help little Abra. He even sacrifices himself to save her.

Violence & Scariness

Children in peril, screaming in panic/pain, children killed. Death. Characters fight in a bar; someone's face is punched with a pool ball. Bloody wounds/blood stains. Skin peeled off of hand. Guns and shooting; villains dying, turning to dust. Character shoots himself in head. Fighting with axe. Bruised eye. Sexual predator character (older, married man tries to pick up teen girl). Scary music/scary stuff. Jump scare. Fall from high place. Hypodermic needle. Graphic story about deer hunting.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Fully naked elderly female ghost (more scary than sexy). A man wakes up naked next to a naked woman; his bare bottom is shown, and she's seen from the side. Kissing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few uses of "f--k," "s--t," "bulls--t," "bitch," "son of a bitch," "ass," and "damn." Also "Jesus" (as an exclamation), "hope to God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Mention of Netflix. Coca-Cola vending machine shown.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The main character is an alcoholic. He drinks shots in a bar, wakes up not knowing where he is, vomits. He later attends AA meetings, quits drinking. He also smokes cigarettes. Character snorts cocaine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Doctor Sleep is a horror movie adapted from a Stephen King novel; it's the official sequel to The Shining . Violence is quite intense: Children are shown in peril, screaming, and dying, and there are guns and shooting, fighting and punching, an ax fight, bloody wounds, gore, a sexual predator, and more. The naked ghost of an elderly woman is seen, a man wakes up naked in bed with a woman (his buttocks are shown, and she's shown from the side), and characters kiss. Language includes uses of "f--k," "s--t, "bitch," and more. The main character ( Ewan McGregor ) is an alcoholic who drinks, passes out, wakes up in unfamiliar places, and vomits. He eventually goes to AA meetings and quits. He also smokes cigarettes, and another character snorts cocaine. Directed by Mike Flanagan , the film can't compare to Stanley Kubrick 's original, but, despite the upsetting violence toward kids, it's a well-made, involving sequel for mature viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parents say (40)
Kids say (36)

Based on 40 parent reviews

Kids being murdered for steam.

Disturbing, and i’m tough., what's the story.

In DOCTOR SLEEP, Danny Torrance and his mother escape the Overlook Hotel after the events of The Shining and try to move on with their lives. But Danny is still haunted by the spirits from that place. So Dick Hallorann appears and teaches Danny how to lock the spirits away. Years later, Danny ( Ewan McGregor ) has become an alcoholic and a drifter. He arrives in a small town, where Billy Freeman ( Cliff Curtis ) helps get him a job as an orderly in a hospital and takes him to AA meetings. Soon Danny is contacted by young Abra Stone ( Kyliegh Curran ), who "shines" in a very strong way. Unfortunately, Abra has also attracted the attention of Rose ( Rebecca Ferguson ), an evil being who travels with a pack of ageless followers and eats the essence of those who "shine." Can Danny help Abra before it's too late?

Is It Any Good?

While it could never compare to Stanley Kubrick 's original, this sequel is a leisurely, likable mix of character development and effective scares, though it's marred by intense violence toward kids. Based on Stephen King 's novel and written and directed by Mike Flanagan , Doctor Sleep tackles its most difficult obstacle -- attaching itself to The Shining -- admirably. Flanagan, whose previous King adaptation Gerald's Game was also very strong, uses a few quick clips from Kubrick's film but mostly re-films it, using lookalike actors. This points the focus toward the new story, which McGregor carries nicely with a strongly sympathetic performance. Scenes of Danny at work, sitting with patients who are about to die (and earning his nickname "Doctor Sleep") are wonderfully tender.

Additionally, young Curran displays great strength and screen presence, and she and McGregor make a fine pair. Ferguson's villain is a little one-dimensional, but she plays the role with an infectious joy and sensuality. Already a horror expert, Flanagan delivers a few truly spooky moments, sometimes inspired by the original but frequently his own. Even the movie's long runtime tends to add depth rather than make it feel bloated. But while Doctor Sleep is mostly worth seeing, it crosses a line when it depicts the villains' ruthless violence toward kids; the screaming of skilled young actor Jacob Tremblay will cause most viewers' blood to run cold.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Doctor Sleep 's violence . How did it make you feel? Do the scenes involving children cross a line? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How does the movie depict drinking ? What consequences does Danny face for drinking? How does he deal with it?

How does Doctor Sleep compare to the movie The Shining ? How does it compare to the novel?

Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of horror movies ?

Movie Details

In theaters : November 8, 2019
On DVD or streaming : February 4, 2020
Cast : Ewan McGregor , Rebecca Ferguson , Kyliegh Curran
Director : Mike Flanagan
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
Studio : Warner Bros.
Genre : Horror
Topics : Book Characters
Run time : 151 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : disturbing and violent content, some bloody images, language, nudity and drug use
Last updated : April 25, 2024

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Doctor Sleep movie review: a reckoning with the ghosts of the past

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D id we need a sequel to The Shining , Stephen King’s 1977 novel or Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1980 movie mounting of it? I would have said no. Doctor Sleep is, at least, based on a new-ish (2013) novel by King (that is to say, this sequel is not the invention of a non-King mind), but that’s nothing to get excited about lately: Hollywood’s recent attempts to bring the writer’s work to the big screen have been underwhelming, and that’s me being kind. (Looking at you, Pet Sematary and both chapters of It .) And then Sleep is two and a half hours long, which doesn’t bode well for a smart adaptation of any novel: such length is too often the result of lazy, slavish indulgence of the source material rather than the judicious pruning of it a film version requires. (Honestly, most novels provide simply too much story for a single film, not that that stops anyone.)

So I settled in, expecting a cinematic endurance test, accompanied by much rolling of eyes and glancing at watch. And… I was stunned and delighted to discover that that never happened. Screenwriter and director Mike Flanagan ( Oculus ) has made a film that is actually beautiful and unexpectedly delicate — when can that ever be said about this genre?! — one that defies current Hollywood notions of what constitutes “horror.” Hell, in some ways it defies current Hollywood notions of what constitutes a movie. I mean that in the best way. I mean that in a way that sucked me right in, made me feel — oddly and a little disconcertingly, given the subject matter — right at home. This is a movie that is the exact opposite of an endurance test. It’s a movie that I could have watched forever.

Flanagan takes his time introducing us to his characters and their world, lets them breathe and live and just be in their skins, yet is never less than totally engaging while doing so. You should be wondering (and maybe some viewers will?), When will The Movie start? And instead I, at least, was all: I like these people and am fascinated by them, and I am happy to spend time with them. It is simultaneously shocking and a huge relief to see a movie — not an arthouse movie, not a movie intended as anything other than solid popcorn entertainment — that doesn’t feel the need to rush, to jump right into plot-plot-plot. It feels… grownup . In a way that too few movies bother with nowadays.

It’s a solid hour into Doctor Sleep before anything approaching movie-movie “horror” happens. It’s at least that long before you start to grasp how seemingly divergent story threads are going to interact, what these characters — who are not yet even aware of one another’s existence — are going to mean to one another, and even whether anyone is solidly villainous. (Not a spoiler: There are villains. But they are more richly drawn, even more disturbingly empathetic, if only a little, than the genre usually bothers with.)

Not that there isn’t plenty unsettling here! For this is the tale of Danny Torrance — that’s right, the little boy from The Shining — now all grown up, and not coping at all well with the legacy of what happened in that remote, snowed-in hotel in the Colorado Rockies when he was a little boy. Much of the early bits of Doctor Sleep are given over to adult Danny’s navigation of his own trauma, self-medicating (with alcohol; shades of his father; but also shades of too many sad people who don’t even have ghosts stalking them) the PTSD that has come from his paranormal ability to communicate with the dead, his “shining.” (FYI, I think you’ll be fine with this movie even if you’ve never read The Shining or seen the 1980 movie, but of course having both under your belt will make for a richer experience here. I’ve read the novel and seen the first film, though it’s been a very long time since either. But I was never lost or confused.)

Doctor Sleep Kyliegh Curran Rebecca Ferguson

The terror in Doctor Sleep isn’t merely “psychological” in that sense that has come to mean “springing from the sorts of terrible existential fears that keep you awake at night, rather than from graphic depictions of blood and gore,” but of a deeply humane , even mundane sort. This is a story in which the paranormal isn’t “weird,” per se, more a metaphor for those keeping-you-awake dreads, just part of the human experience, and often a sympathetically painful one. Ewan McGregor ( Beauty and the Beast , T2 Trainspotting ), as the adult Danny, turns in one of his best performances in absolute ages…not that he’s ever been an actor who doesn’t always find a credible groundedness in his characters and a generosity toward them, even if the movies around him don’t always deserve the effort. But here, he brings a tender, well, silkiness to Danny’s distress: perhaps the most unnerving aspect of Doctor Sleep is how McGregor draws us so profoundly into Danny’s suffering, makes it so plausible even as the cause of it is entirely fantastical. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a story do better at making the fictional dichotomy between the invented uncanny and the human response to it feels so real.

Anyway, Danny finds a way to manage the supernatural shit he has to deal with — the title of the movie refers to part of it, but I won’t spoil — but then he encounters, supernaturally, a tween girl, Abra Stone (newbie Kyliegh Curran, who almost steals the movie from McGregor), who shares his “talent” for the “shining” and, because of it, is being targeted by a group of supernaturally talented people led by “Rose the Hat” (Rebecca Ferguson [ Men in Black: International , Mission: Impossible – Fallout ], who is… chilling) who prey on children like Abra because…

Doctor Sleep Ewan McGregor Kyliegh Curran

Well. Doctor Sleep continues to be an unfamiliar sort of horror movie, not least because it busts a longstanding taboo of the genre, the one that says that there should be no depiction of children being hurt or killed onscreen. That… happens here. (My goodness, but Jacob Tremblay [ Good Boys , The Predator ] is surely one of our most astonishing young actors at the moment.) And it is deeply awful. As it should be. But it never feels exploitive. It feels exactly as horrific as it should.

Doctor Sleep is too straightforward in style, too free of pretense and artsiness to be called Kubrickian — and it seems obvious there was no attempt on Flanagan’s part to even aim for such a mood — but this seems a worthy follow-up to the 1980 film nevertheless. There’s an honesty here that feels rare for a horror film, an undismissableness that cements the strange and supernatural as undeniably authentic. Usually we have to suspend our disbelief to buy into a movie like Doctor Sleep . The fact that that seems unnecessary here? That’s really scary.

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Wow, that’s a surprise. Granted I knew absolutely nothing about this film except that it was the “sequel made 20 no 30 no 40 years later nobody asked for”, but that’s enough for me to write a movie off. Good to hear it brings something new (and good!) rather than the “Hey, did you like the Shining?!” that I expected.

Gosh, its reviews like this that remind me why you are the only movie reviewer I actively follow. I get a visceral feel for a movie through your writing. And here you’ve taken a movie that I had zero interest in (not a fan of most King adaptations, didn’t like the original Shining) and turned me completely around. Great review.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Thank you, MaryAnn! So glad to hear this. I loved the book and (like so many of King’s books) have been waiting and hoping for the movie for years. Never mind The Shining, old stuff, been there, done that. Good book, didn’t like the movie or the remake. (Sure, sacrilege to Kubrick. Foo.) For me this isn’t a sequel, it’s Doctor Sleep.

I’m glad you gave this the Green Light. Our guy that reviewed it gave it full marks as well, so I’m going to get out of my cave tomorrow, buy a $10 bag of popcorn, and watch it with confidence.

I’m so excited to see this now. I read the book a while back and enjoyed it – and was dreading the inevitable screen adaptation (like you say, so many King adaptations are just awful). But your review tell me it’s time to hit the theater.

I’m glad to see the reactions to this. True confession: I hate Kubrik’s movie. I adore the book, and I will never forgive Kubrik for what he did to those characters, especially Wendy. But Doctor Sleep (the book) is easily my favorite of his post-Tower novels, and if the movie is even half as good as the book, I can forgive the Kubrikian lens.

Welp, I have now seen it, and I give it a solid B, with the understanding that some of the things that cost me points are things that come from loving the book so much. I did really love how they brought in the ending of The Shining in Abra’s confrontation with possessed!Dan although I still miss the sense that Jack really loved Danny that both the novels gave us. But I’ll definitely be getting this when it comes out for home viewing.

I’ve been following Mike Flanagan since Absentia , which I still think a small and terrifying film. I was nervous about his entry into the mainstream … the Haunting of Hill House for the most part laid this nervousness to rest (but then resurrected it with what I thought was a cop-out ending). I look forward to watching this!

Why hi there! The villains were very unsettling in this film. They do people things, like go to the grocery store and complain about modern living. They banter and worry about eachother. They also eat children. If you were to meet them in public, well, they’d probably make for pleasant conversation. I think that’s what makes them so scary.

The thing with Rose the Hat pushing a wagon around the grocery store is *so chilling* for its normality. Like, what other monsters are doing their shopping when you’re there? *shudder*

(Minor spoiler and moderate spoiler below …)

I didn’t like the movie nearly as much as you did, perhaps because I felt like it suffered in comparison with the book. But I have to say, since you mentioned that you initially feared the movie would be overlong, they made cuts in exactly the right places. I kept thinking, “Oh, that subplot/character is gone now? Yeah, good call. The indulgences that worked well in text would’ve made the movie six hours long, and they weren’t necessary to tell a good story.”

Another thought: Doctor Sleep the movie is a sequel to The Shining the movie, not the book. Despite my not being a big fan of Kubrick’s Shining, that was another choice that very much worked for the movie sequel. The callbacks were so much fun. One of my favorite visuals (MINOR SPOILER) is Rose the Hat looking at the iconic blood spilling out of the elevators in slow-mo and smiling appreciatively.

My biggest complaint with the adaptation is (MODERATE SPOILER) that they killed Abra’s dad off—in the book, he lives. That in itself doesn’t bother me. It’s a horror movie, horrific things are supposed to happen, and Dad’s death effectively ratcheted up the tension. The problem is that Abra’s arc proceeds as though it didn’t happen. She never seemed to grieve the way you’d expect a 13-year-old would after the brutal murder of her father. If they couldn’t fit that in between or during action sequences, they shouldn’t have included it.

“One of my favorite visuals (MINOR SPOILER) is Rose the Hat looking at the iconic blood spilling out of the elevators in slow-mo and smiling appreciatively.”

See, when I got to that point I screamed at the screen “we get it, you’ve seen The Shining!” I liked the subtle visual references earlier, like Dan having a job interview in a room that looked just like the one where Jack interviewed to run the Overlook, but by the end it felt like Flanagan was just aping Kubrick instead of telling his own story (let alone King’s).

I saw The Shining once, 30 years ago, so as much as I liked the callbacks, anything more subtle than the blood spilling out of the elevators or the bartender, now Jack, talking to Dan. When they were driving up to the Overlook, I thought, “Hey, was that the original theme music?” Yep, but I had to look it up later to confirm. I can see how it might get old if you’re seeing these all the time.

At any rate, we’ve watched The Shining , and the creators have watched The Shining , but Rose the Hat hasn’t. And I got a kick out of watching her reaction. “Yes, as a connoisseur of evil, I think this is nicely done.

Just watching it now, and only because you recommended it. Was going to have it on in the background while doing other small tasks. But… you were right. got hooked within a few minutes.

“too free of pretense and artsiness to be called Kubrickian — and it seems obvious there was no attempt on Flanagan’s part to even aim for such a mood”

I’m sorry, what? The entire last hour of the movie was practically a shot-for-shot recreation of the highlights of Kubrick’s movie, and it completely killed my interest. The first half was great, but it diverged from the book (which I loved) quite a bit in the second half. I might not have minded that if it did something original, but instead it just xeroxed a previous movie in a way that struck me as lazy.

Anyway, I personally did think we needed a sequel to The Shining- the original builds up how important Danny would be in the future, and I wanted to see what that future would be like. We got the sequel I wanted on paper. On film, not so much. But then I was never very fond of Kubrick’s movie in the first place.

You’ve no doubt heard that Stephen King hated _The Shining_. Interestingly enough, he liked the sequel so much that it made him regard the original more fondly.

At the very least, it kind of justified not blowing up the Overlook at the end of the first one. While the book was far superior to the movie, it’s not all that exciting to return to a haunted … campground.

Yes, the film does recreate some settings from The Shining , but not, I felt, in an imitative way.

Obvs, your mileage varies. :-)

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Doctor Sleep Review

24 Jan 2020

Doctor Sleep

Perhaps it’s apt that Doctor Sleep is a movie about dealing with the ghosts of the past, because it has a couple of doozies of its own to contend with. As, despite the title, Mike Flanagan ’s movie is not a remake of the 2002 Goran Visnjic psycho-thriller, but instead a sequel to The Shining … and The Shining .

A quick explanation: Stanley Kubrick adapted Stephen King ’s novel in 1980. King didn’t like it. Kubrick didn’t much care, for his sole foray into horror was rated an instant classic. But King hated it enough to make his own, wildly inferior version for TV, and then, just a few years ago, write a novel sequel that basically acted like the Kubrick movie didn’t exist.

It’s that novel that Flanagan has adapted for the big screen. But, at the same time, Doctor Sleep is also a direct continuation of the Kubrick adaptation. It’s King’s floorplan, but with Kubrick’s furniture. And, after getting King and the Kubrick estate to sign off on that, perhaps Flanagan’s next trick could be sorting out Brexit.

It’s a warmer film than Kubrick was perhaps ever capable of, and more interested in its characters.

Venturing into Kubrick territory is perhaps symptomatic of the confidence coursing through Flanagan’s veins after the last couple of years saw him pay off, with his Netflix adaptations of The Haunting Of Hill House and that man King’s Gerald’s Game , the early potential of horror flicks like Oculus and Ouija: Origin Of Evil . Yet, he’s wise enough here not to merely ape Kubrick’s funkiest moves.

There are moments where he recreates direct shots and revisits locations from the original movie (you’ll know them when you see them), but this is not ‘The Shining Part II’. Where that film was a claustrophobic study in madness, paranoia and corruption, Doctor Sleep is an expansive, sombre, multi-location, multi-character drama, a world away from its progenitor. Interestingly, despite more redrum than you could shake a kcits at, it isn’t particularly scary or unsettling. Perhaps Flanagan knew that trying to match The Shining in the terror stakes was a fool’s errand. Perhaps the flaws in King’s story, which keeps its trio of central characters apart for a length of time that could either be called character-building, flabby or plain boring (depending on your point of view), make jolts harder to come by.

Instead, it’s a warmer film than Kubrick was perhaps ever capable of, and more interested in its characters. McGregor , after Renton in T2 Trainspotting and Christopher Robin in the film of the same name , is cornering the market in middle-aged characters revisiting their formative years, and he’s perfectly solid as the haunted Dan Torrance, if never quite able to suggest that he’s the fruit of Jack Nicholson ’s loony loins. Spikier, sparkier performances are given by newcomer Kyliegh Curran as the indefatigable Abra, and Rebecca Ferguson as callous, curiously accented psychic vampire Rose The Hat. Whether she’s meditating on top of a camper van or floating through the clouds in a trippy sequence, the film never feels more alive than when Flanagan is focused on its villain. Just like Kubrick found with Jack. Maybe this is ‘The Shining Part II’, after all.

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‘doctor sleep’ review: a gripping ‘shining’ sequel.

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Heeeeeeere’s Johnny…’s review of “Doctor Sleep.”

If you’ve ever sat up at night thinking, “What happened to Shelley Duvall and the creepy kid in ‘The Shining?'” your question is answered by the new screen sequel to Stephen King’s story. A pretty good one, at that.

Little Danny “Redrum” Torrance has grown into a turbulent adult (Ewan McGregor), as he continues to be plagued by the horrors he witnessed at Colorado’s Overlook Hotel. No therapist can wipe away the image of Jack Nicholson wielding an ax.

But Dan finds the perfect job: as a receptionist at an old folks’ home where death is always on the menu. He’s also still got “the shine,” the supernatural power that’s a hybrid of telepathy and telekinesis. In an attempt to move on and be normal, he’s kept his extraordinary abilities on the back burner, and learned to trap his mind’s many demons.

This is when the film begins to depart from the epic, Kubrickian sensibility of “The Shining” and settles for a more “X-Files”-like style of follow-the-clues storytelling.

There is a strange, cultish group that travels the country looking for people who “shine” to kill them and feed off their energy. They’re led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), a dangerous woman who looks like Stevie Nicks. We learn that she’s not on the edge of 17, however, but closer to 500, as the group has been alive for centuries.

The baddies have their sights on a little girl named Abra (Kyliegh Curran), the most powerful shine-er in the world. Dan needs to come out of mental hibernation to protect her.

The complex plot takes some time to get used to, especially if you’ve come to the theater expecting a story consistent with the simplicity of “The Shining.” If that was easy as pie, this is easy as pi. But when it confidently hits its stride near the middle, “Doctor Sleep” is gripping.

McGregor is a good choice for big Dan, as he can simultaneously be lovable and tormented. He and a precocious little girl also make an amusing buddy-cop duo. This is the first major role for 13-year-old Curran, and she makes a strong impression with her sneaky smiles and threatening strength. Bizarrely though, Jacob Tremblay, who’s now a legit star, has only the tiniest of cameos.

But what everyone will be talking about after “Doctor Sleep” is the return to the Overlook. The movie skillfully builds to the tense final sequence, in which writer/director Mike Flanagan has re-created the hotel just as it was in the 1980 film. He even films it in Kubrick’s cavernous, blinding manner.

You’ll be reunited with some twins who want to play, and a naked zombie in a bathtub. But the best shot of this film, for King fans, will be a glass of Jack Daniel’s on a bar.

Doctor Sleep Director's Cut: 9 Key Differences From The Theatrical Cut

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Doctor Sleep. If you have not yet seen the film, continue at your own risk!

Mike Flanagan ’s Doctor Sleep was an amazing and brilliantly made film as it existed when it was first released in the fall of 2019, but fans found even more reason to be excited about the Stephen King adaptation when the home video plans were announced. As comprehensive as the theatrical cut was, the existence of a Director’s Cut featuring 30 extra minutes of footage sent fans over the moon with excitement – and when it was released in early 2020 it most definitely didn’t disappoint.

But how are the two films different? What does the newer version add? What makes the Director’s Cut superior? If you’re asking yourself those questions, particularly while considering which version to watch on HBO Max , you’re in luck, as we’ve basically built this feature with you in mind. Watching the three hour version of Doctor Sleep and directly comparing it with its big screen counterpart, we’ve highlighted all of the key differences between them, and you can read all about them below:

Extended Hunting Violet Sequence

Doctor Sleep is a story with a massive first act (one that has to fill the gap of time between 1980 and 2019), and creating the adaptation meant Mike Flanagan really had to get the theatrical cut moving quickly. With the extra real estate of the extended edition, however, he takes the opportunity to slow things down a bit – and this can be found in the very first sequence. The longer version only adds maybe 90 seconds at most, but they are moments that notably add extra tension.

What’s added to the scene are tiny beats like the wandering young Violet picking a flower and noticing the True Knot caravan, or hesitating before telling Rose The Hat the color of the flower in her hat, but they are great because of the fear they put in the atmosphere. The big kicker, though, is added end of the scene, which follows Violet’s mother as she calls out looking for her daughter while Rose and her brood drive away in the distance.

Chapter Structure

While Mike Flanagan does make some changes to Doctor Sleep that ultimately prove to be for the benefit of the story, the movie is very much a faithful adaptation of the Stephen King book on which it’s based – and that even gets to be taken to a new level in the Director’s Cut thanks to the notable structural tool that is implemented: chapters.

The three-hour version of Doctor Sleep is divided up into six sections with the inclusion of six title cards interspersed throughout the cut, with names “Old Ghosts,” “Empty Devils,” “Little Spy,” “Turn, World,” “Parlor Tricks” and “What Was Forgotten.” This doesn’t exactly have the effect of making the film feel episodic, but it does add a kind of epic quality while also contributing a kind of psychological addition to the pacing by artificially demonstrating the story’s progress.

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Dick Halloran And Young Danny

One of the most vital relationships in Doctor Sleep is the one that exists between Dan Torrance and Dick Halloran – the former cook at the Overlook Hotel who became a kind of Shining mentor for the powerful young kid. That bond is ultimately meant to reflect the one between Dan and Abra, making the early scene between Dan and Dick an incredibly important one. Fortunately the version in the theatrical version is excellent, but the Director’s Cut makes it even better.

This is another case where it feels like material was cut just to move the scene along and not overburden the heavy first act, but there is so much extra key reflection on The Shining that it stands out as being significant and compelling in the extended cut. Carl Lumbly does an exceptional job picking up the baton from Scatman Crothers’ performance, and the longer version of his chat with young Danny wonderfully sets up their important bond as the kid grows into a screw-up of an adult.

More Of Young Abra Discovering Her Powers

In Doctor Sleep ’s theatrical cut, Abra’s big entrance comes during her birthday party when she shocks her parents by getting all of the spoons in the kitchen to levitate against the ceiling, but the Director’s Cut shows that episode wasn’t the first time that the young girl freaked out her parents, David and Lucy, with her abilities. The longer version adds in a scene from the night before the party, and finds Abra playing the piano before her parents come in to tell her that it’s bedtime. After they tuck the tiny psychic in, David and Lucy hear the same song she was playing downstairs, but after investigating they are surprised to discover that the piano is playing itself a.k.a. Abra is playing it in her dreams.

The extra scene doesn’t really do anything that the birthday party sequence doesn’t also do, which is presumably why Mike Flanagan felt it could be cut, but with the first act being so Dan and Rose heavy, its inclusion in the Doctor Sleep Director’s Cut is welcome. It would have been unnecessary for the adaptation to copy the Stephen King book exactly and trace Abra’s entire life story (including her traumatic vision of September 11th as an infant), but this added bit is a smart add.

The Extended Baseball Boy Sequence

The conversation about iconic moments in Stephen King adaptations is a vivid one, from Carrie being covered in blood at the prom to the hobbling scene in Misery , and Doctor Sleep ’s contribution to that legacy is the murder of the Baseball Boy . A part of your soul gets dimmer as you watch the True Knot viciously tear into angelic Oscar-nominee Jacob Tremblay , the group practically orgasming in coordination with how much pain the child is experiencing. It’s an exceptionally hard-to-watch sequence in the theatrical version, and guess what? It’s even more horrific in the Director’s Cut.

Watching the two versions of the scene side-by-side, you note that the home video release is longer, but also that the real secret sauce to the extra power of the scene is watching Jacob Tremblay’s face. Shots of the Baseball Boy in profile are straight-up replaced by close-ups, and there are more than a couple of moments where blood squirts up to his chin – something you don’t see any of in the theatrical cut. The longer version is arguably the better version if not just because it packs even more of an emotional smash in the face.

The Earthquake On Abra’s Street

Following Rose The Hat and Abra’s surprise, shocking supermarket showdown, the former is able to psychically reach out and travel across the whole country to find the latter’s home in New Hampshire – trying to get a read on the girl so that she can be set up for the True Knot’s next hunt for steam. Rose’s corporeal self in the theatrical cut is seemingly directly drawn to Abra’s energy as she flies across the nation, but there is an interesting addition in the Director’s Cut that makes the sequence a tad clearer.

As it turns out, the aforementioned surprise, shocking supermarket showdown between Rose and Abra had the effect of generating seismograph oscillations in Abra’s neighborhood, and this is something that Crow Daddy finds and reports to Rose prior to her out-of-body experience. It’s not a strictly necessary detail, as watching the theatrical cut you can explain away Rose’s ability to easily find Abra as being because of the trap that has been set, but the earthquake detail is a nice touch, and one that is taken straight from Stephen King’s book.

Abra’s Dad Learns About The Baseball Boy, And Defends His Daughter

If the still above looks familiar, it’s because it is the most notable shot in the marketing material for Doctor Sleep that is only in the Director’s Cut and not the theatrical. In the abridged version, the contentious first meeting between David Stone and Dan Torrance is broken up in the driveway of the Stone house when Abra psychically shows her father everything that happened to the Baseball Boy, but in the home video release the psychic blast in the driveway is only used to defuse the near-fist fight. This leads the characters to go inside together, and Abra delivers the full story by putting her fingers against her father’s temple.

This is one of two notable adds of material featuring Zackary Momoh’s David Stone in the Doctor Sleep Director’s Cut – with the second being much sadder. Specifically, the extended edition has a confrontation between David and Crow Daddy after the True Knot member breaks in to try and kidnap Abra. David makes a valiant effort, threatening the Crow with a kitchen knife, but as is also shown in the theatrical version, that same knife ends up in his chest.

More Dan And Jack

Doctor Sleep ’s greatest accomplishment is the way in which it is able to be both an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel and a sequel to Stanley Kubrick ’s The Shining , and in the latter department one of its most impressive achievements is the way in which the movie brings back Jack Torrance. Dan having the opportunity to confront his father with all of the trauma and baggage he’s carried around his entire life is the most important emotional scene in the film, and it’s brought to life in the theatrical cut with remarkable faithfulness to the material in every respect, and an awesome performance by Henry Thomas . And you know what’s great about the Director’s Cut? There’s even more to it!

As explored above, many of the differences between the two versions of the film are logical and explainable, but in this particular case the reasoning for the edits is not obvious, and it’s too bad that the full sequence isn’t in both. Not only is the Doctor Sleep Director’s Cut version better for having more, it also finds the characters move to a second iconic location within the Overlook Hotel: the red-painted bathroom. It’s special work all around, and it’s just amazing that it exists.

While these are all of the key differences between the two Doctor Sleep cuts, this isn’t a list of all of them. There is a whole lot of extra wonderful to explore with the longer version, so if you haven’t done so already, check it out. Both are now available to stream on HBO Max , and can be purchased digitally and on Blu-ray.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Director: Mike Flanagan

Writers: Mike Flanagan, based on the novel by Stephen King

Composer: The Newton Brothers

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran

Genre: Horror

Right from the outset, the concept of creating a sequel to The Shining seems fraught with problems. Stanley Kubrick’s rendition of Stephen King’s novel of the same name is frequently lauded as a masterpiece of cinema. A timeless example of psychological horror, the movie has made an impressionable mark on film history, with its eerie tone, unsettling images and memorable performances. Which only makes the prospect of creating a follow up all the more daunting.

To add to an already nightmarishly difficult project, Stephen King has famously stated several times that he dislikes Kubrick’s version. So then how does one adapt the sequel? Do you stay true to the film that most people would be familiar with? Or do you follow the author’s vision, even when it may contradict the film version that is being referenced? It’s a fine line that must be walked, though director Mike Flanagan is no newcomer to the genre itself. Boasting a slew of well-received movies within his filmography (including a decent prequel to the painfully bad horror, Ouija ), can Flanagan pull off his touch of film magic once again, creating success out of an assumedly doomed project?

Content Guide

Violence/Scary Images: The film’s group of villains prey on children, mercilessly murdering them in ways that cause a long and painful death. A boy is stabbed multiple times. Blood splatter and close ups on blood-drenched wounds and peeling skin. Gun violence. One character suicides by shooting themselves. A person’s skeleton and musculoskeletal structure is seen – the image is overlaid on top of how they appear normally, and it rapidly switches back and forth in a scary fashion. Numerous physical assaults. An axe is swung at others. Multiple deaths. Decaying bodies, one reactivated and walking around naked. Shot of character with no eyeballs.

Language/Crude Humor: Infrequent but strong swearing (f-bomb, s-word, female dog and variations). Jesus and God’s names are used in vain at least once, though are mostly used in context.

Drug/Alcohol References: Alcoholism is a major theme throughout the film. It depicts drinking irresponsibly and to excess, but does so in order to highlight the problems of substance abuse. A character is seen snorting cocaine (once again, portrayed in a negative light). The villains consume a steam-like substance, which is reminiscent of substance abuse and being high.

Sexual Content: A fully naked old woman is seen multiple times (she’s scary – nudity is not portrayed in a sexual light. Ew.). A man and woman have premarital sex – they are seen lying naked in bed together, on their sides, with the curvature of their bare bodies (back and bottom) displayed. Some kissing. How the villains react to a kill feels sexualised/orgasmic in some situations.

Spiritual Content: This film features strong and positive depictions of well-adjusted Christian males. A member of a church community helps another character get their life back on track, through supporting them and otherwise displaying Christ’s love. The tail end of a sermon is shown. In this film’s world, the afterlife exists, though there are ghosts, demonic beings, and mysterious powers that some people have which allow telepathy, telekinesis, and seer abilities.

Other Negative Content: A lot of inappropriate predatory behaviours are seen, though not promoted within the story. For instance, there’s an older man that tries to have an affair with an underage girl. The villains lure and hunt down children, forcing them to do things without their consent.

Positive Content: The film explores the fear of falling victim to one’s nature; to follow in the footsteps of an abusive father, or whether one can overcome their horrific past in order to walk their own path. It contrasts both bad and positive male role models, pressing the need to help others that are more vulnerable than ourselves. A good vs. evil plot, where evil acts cannot be ignored but must be obliterated entirely.

Can we be honest here? Brutally honest? Kubrick’s The Shining may contain some of the most iconic and eerie cinematography in film history, but as a story, there is room for improvement. The horror was mainly derived from the movie’s atmosphere as it contained a nightmarish quality, though like a semi-conscious state of mind, it was lacking the level of logical cohesion that is normally encountered in more traditional narratives. It is a piece of art because it delivers an unnerving experience, brought about by intentionally leaving out important fragments of exposition.

One of the more frustrating aspects of the classic 1980 film was that it barely touched on the significance of Danny’s powers (which was also the movie’s namesake), instead choosing to focus on the craziness of Jack’s character. While Stephen King acknowledges the film’s masterful aesthetic, he has repeatedly disparaged Kubrick’s version for its inability to tell a good story.

Mike Flanagan’s straightforward sequel certainly doesn’t suffer from the same weaknesses as Stanley Kubrick’s stylistic original. It’s abundantly obvious that Flanagan is a joint screenwriter and director that is a master of narrative storytelling. He knows how to craft a ripping tale, and additionally how to break the rules when required.

Doctor Sleep is a rare film in many ways. Its most shocking aspect on a technical level is that it features the narrative’s most pivotal moment – the Inciting Incident (or Call to Adventure if you so prefer) – one hour into the piece. That’s an extraordinarily long first act, given that the recommended time for a standard film is between twenty to thirty minutes. The only movies that typically do this are a) bad ones, or b) rare Oscar-winning masterpieces like Rocky . Thankfully Doctor Sleep shares more in common with the latter.

What’s shocking is that such an extension isn’t noticeable until the inciting incident finally arrives. The film is utterly captivating with its world building, with Flanagan making the most with his borrowed time. In fact, the first act of could almost pass as a self-contained short film. If The Shining is the story about Danny’s trauma, then Doctor Sleep is the tale of the character’s challenging rehabilitation and recovery. The long first act operates as an epilogue to The Shining , finally addressing the unanswered questions inherited from Kubrick’s version, whilst also realistically fleshing out several of the story’s main characters.

The film’s terror resides in the narrative’s themes. While Danny is still haunted by the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel, it’s his father’s shadow that looms over him the most. He is crippled by the fear of becoming like his alcoholic father, and the depiction of his journey isn’t as far fetched as one might expect, reflecting a tragic cycle of abuse. Yet while society is currently obsessed with pointing out examples of toxic masculinity, Doctor Sleep has the sense to also offer positive male role models to balance out its viewpoint.

It is therefore pleasantly surprising to report that Doctor Sleep features some of the best Christian characters seen in cinema this year. If you’re searching for a wholesome vision of a working men’s ministry, then look no further! Unlike some films in the Christian genre, Doctor Sleep isn’t pushing an agenda – it doesn’t have the same mistaken vested interest in making sure it portrays the perfect follower of God, as though a single human flaw somehow tarnishes the good news of the Gospel.

Instead of attempting to manipulate the audience into converting, essentially turning the movie into a propaganda film, the Christianity represented naturally stems from the narrative. Danny’s life story is one that is engrossed by the sins of the past, and the Christians he encounters serve as an ideal and symbolic counterpoint to his journey of self-destruction. Like a typical proverb, the film toys with the possibility of Danny travelling along one of two paths – one of folly, and one of righteousness.

Another rarity seen within the horror genre is that every decision made makes sense according to the character. Nothing feels contrived, where in order for the story to work, it must rely on a series of stupid decisions. In many ways, you begin to see where this film must head, and while some people may complain about the movie’s predictability, this is actually a good thing. It means the story and characters have been properly established, with an appropriate level of foreshadowing. Falling into step with those on screen, you not only agree or at least understand their choices, but you desperately want to see them progress in certain directions. Doctor Sleep masterfully shapes the audience’s desires and then repeatedly delivers what they want, making for a wonderfully satisfying cinematic experience.

Ultimately we become familiar with four, well-established and fully realised characters (which once again, is very rare to see in a horror film). One of which is the villain, Rose the Hat, played magnificently by Rebecca Ferguson. Doctor Sleep is a film with stakes, not just for the protagonists but for the antagonists as well. While we certainly don’t agree with Rose and her evil comrades’ actions, we understand their motives, their drive, and why everything is so important them – information that is normally absent from a horror film unless its revealed during a dramatic speech at the end. Feeling emotionally connected to the characters means that the cannon fodder isn’t as easily identified, and like Game of Thrones , you know that every death of an established character will pack some grievous weight.

This isn’t some mindless slaughterhouse where the entertainment stems from the gory death itself, like Final Destination where the characters are cruelly pitted against insurmountable odds. Nor is it like Greta where all the suspense is removed because the villain is painfully weak compared to the hero, making for a frustrating watch. Instead, Rose the Hat and her followers are an even match to Dan Torrence and newcomer Abra Stone, making for a thrilling battle between good and evil, where the film doesn’t play it safe in regards to whom might win. Some of the story’s fear stems from the uncertainty of the outcome, despite the clarity of the characters’ goals and the direction of the plot.

The rarest element found in Doctor Sleep is its fitting conclusion. It’s so common to see horror films develop a rich world built upon an intriguing concept, only to falter at the very end with the narrative divulging into silliness. Yet Doctor Sleep stays strong with its themes and message all the way through, completing several satisfying character arcs, and even putting the other heavy hitting 2019 horror films – such as Us – to shame.

Yet it’s not a perfect film. Horror is subjective, and viewers that prefer their scary movie littered with jump scares will find little pleasure here. It’s a long movie. It may be too long for some. It’s essentially a character study where the terror is hidden amongst the protagonist’s psyche as opposed to being overt and resorting to gruesome imagery or torture porn. Simply put, Doctor Sleep may not be the style of horror film that you desire.

But for those that enjoyed the psychological chills present in The Shining , then Doctor Sleep will be a fantastic accompaniment. From a technical standpoint, it’s hard to fault. Ewan McGregor makes a marvellous Danny, whilst Kyliegh Curran successfully pulls off a difficult role as a precocious pre-teen; she never once comes across as annoying, as can be the case whenever a film is forced to rely on the skills of a child actor. The score recaptures the essence of the original, allowing the cinematography to sometimes transcend into the surreal. So it’s not only a thematically stunning film, but a visually and aurally beautiful one as well, which for this critic is not just worth a look, but rather a buy.

While Flanagan cannot take all the credit (as King is the creator of the story), he can be praised for successfully reaching in and grabbing the guts and essence of King’s overloaded works, combining it with Kubrick’s visually iconic yet unfaithful and unruly movie adaptation, in order to produce one of the best horror films of the year. So yes – someone actually made a sequel to The Shining . Not only that, it’s good . Sometimes dreams come true.

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Doctor Sleep Director Reveals Stephen King's Bold Prophecy About The Shining Sequel Has Now Come True

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Doctor Sleep , a sequel to Stephen King's The Shining , initially underperformed but gained recognition as one of the best sequels in the last 20 years.
Director Mike Flanagan, known for his horror films and Netflix series, received Stephen King's approval for his adaptation, which includes the Overlook Hotel from Kubrick's version.
Flanagan's upcoming projects include a non-horror masterpiece, The Life of Chuck , and a new Exorcist film, separate from the 2023 sequel by David Gordon Green.

Doctor Sleep , the film based on Stephen King 's book of the same name and which serves as a sequel to his 1977 novel, The Shining , wasn't the massive blockbuster Warner Bros. expected it to be back when it was released in 2019. However, director Mike Flanagan kept his faith in what King told him about the near-perfect adaptation: Time will be kind to this movie. According to Flanagan, King, the master of literary horror and one of his most important influences , was actually right.

Flanagan took to his X/Twitter account to highlight a list by The Hollywood Reporter , in which Doctor Sleep is mentioned as one of the best sequels of the last 20 years. The horror sequel is put alongside Hollywood behemoths Mad Max Fury Road , The Dark Knight , Logan, and John Wick: Chapter 4 . Yes, Terrifier 2 is there as well. The social media post by Flanagan mentions Stephen King had predicted the film would find its deserved spot among notable sequels in a matter of time:

Doctor Sleep

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Flanagan also mentions Doctor Sleep is a film close to his heart. Also written by Flanagan, the film is a faithful adaptation of King's sequel to his horror classic, The Shining , in which Danny Torrance, Jack's surviving son, is now suffering from his own issues. He's an alcoholic who's still able to "shine" (the supernatural power that made Danny susceptible to the entities in the Overlook Hotel), but after a traumatic experience, Danny decides to rehab himself, and move on. Starting a new life, Danny is forced to fight a gang of soul-sucking vampires traveling across the country who want to get their hands on Abra, a young girl who's also able to shine and whose soul seems delicious. The film also forces Danny to come to the Overlook Hotel once again, the place where he once escaped from his violent father.

It's not a secret to anyone how divisive Stanley Kubrick's film of 1980 is , with King going on the record often to say it isn't a good adaptation. There's no denying the legacy of Kubrick's legendary horror film, so Flanagan decided to do something about it—with King's permission, of course. At first, King didn't like Flanagan's plans to show the Overlook Hotel (which did not feature in King's book due to the hotel being destroyed in his version of The Shining). However, when Flanagan presented a blueprint for a very important scene inside the hotel featuring a very important conversation that connects everything between the two stories, the author finally agreed. This change of heart resulted in one of the greatest movie sequels in recent history, and not just in horror.

Mike Flanagan is One of Modern Horror's Most Important Filmmakers

Flanagan's career speaks for itself. The horror director has made remarkable horror movies, both original and IP-based: Hush , Before I Wake , Ouija: Origin of Evil (another great sequel), Gerald's Game (another Stephen King masterpiece), and Doctor Sleep . But perhaps he's mostly known for his Netflix original miniseries:

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
Midnight Mass (2021)
The Midnight Club (2022)
The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)

Mike Flanagan over images of Hill House and Doctor Sleep posters

Horror Director Mike Flanagan Explains Why You Won't Find Any More Bleak Endings in HIs Movies and TV Shows

Mike Flanagan may have had hit after hit on Netflix with TV shows with dark and bleak endings, but you won't see that in his new projects.

His next film to be released is another Stephen King adaptation called The Life of Chuck , which a cast member has already called a "non-horror masterpiece. " The film will be released in 2024 at the Toronto International Film Festival. But perhaps, Flanagan's most important future project is his reimagining of an Exorcist sequel. There's almost nothing confirmed about the new Exorcist film by Flanagan, except for the fact that it won't take place in the same timeline as Blumhouse's 2023 panned sequel by David Gordon Green, The Exorcist: Believer , and that Flanagan will make a "really scary film."

Doctor Sleep is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.

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Mike flanagan reflects on to 1 stephen king prediction coming true for 2019 horror sequel.

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Every Stephen King Movie Franchise, Ranked Worst To Best

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Director Mike Flanagan confirms Stephen King's prediction about Doctor Sleep 's success over the course of time.
Doctor Sleep is a sequel to The Shining .
Doctor Sleep , ranks 5th on Hollywood Reporter 's best movie sequels list.

Director Mike Flanagan reacts to one of Stephen King's predictions about Doctor Sleep coming true. Doctor Sleep is a 2019 sequel to the classic Stanley Kubrick film The Shining , starring a leading cast including Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis, Zahn McCarlnon, and Emily Alyn Lind. It is directed and written by genre auteur Flanagan , who has been considered a master of horror for several years.

Taking to Twitter , Flanagan reacts to one of King's predictions about Doctor Sleep coming true. According to the Doctor Sleep director, King had said that " time would be kind to Doctor Sleep " after its lackluster opening weekend box office.

Proving this message to be true, Flanagan posted a link to a Hollywood Reporter article naming the 15 best movie sequels of the last 20 years, a list on which Doctor Sleep appeared. Flanagan wrote that he " love[s] that it continues to find and build its audience half a decade later ." He went on to say that the film is " close to [his] heart ."

Doctor Sleep's Initial Response Explained

Doctor sleep struggled at the box office.

Doctor Sleep holds a prestigious spot on the Hollywood Reporter list. Also included in the rankings are stellar visual feats such as Avatar: The Way of Water , Dawn of the Planet of the Apes , Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse , and Mission: Impossible - Fallout . Not only did Doctor Sleep manage to make it on the list in the first place, but it did so in high prestige as it is no. 5 on the list overall. The only films ranked above it were Across the Spider-Verse , Creed , The Dark Knight and Mad Max: Fury Road .

In Flanagan's post, he mentions Doctor Sleep 's " disappointing opening weekend at the box office ." The sequel did suffer at the box office during its opening, making only $14.1 million during its first weekend. As a $45 million budget project and a sequel to such an iconic horror film, this initial sum was considered to be fairly low. Overall, Doctor Sleep made just $72.3 million at the worldwide box office , meaning it may not have made a profit while in theaters.

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Stephen King movie franchises are surprisingly rare, though many of them show why the author personally dislikes sequels based on his work.

That said, Doctor Sleep has a dedicated following. This includes King himself, who has been vocal about the vision behind Flanagan's adaptation and vouched for the longevity of Doctor Sleep 's recognition. Despite its box office, Doctor Sleep 's reviews were fairly positive, receiving a 78% approval among critics and an 89% among audiences. As the most recent best sequel list indicates, the love for Doctor Sleep has indeed grown over time, fulfilling King's prophecy and making Flanagan's wishes come true.

Source: Mike Flanagan /Twitter

Doctor Sleep

Based on Stephen King's book of the same name and the sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep follows an adult Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) as he confronts his past at the Overlook Hotel. When a young girl named Abra reaches out to Danny using the telepathic Shine, he learns that she is being hunted and reluctantly becomes her protector. With the Overlook Hotel holding the key to Danny's own power, he's forced to return in order to finally move on.

Mike Flanagan Loves That Stephen King’s Prediction About ‘Doctor Sleep’ Came True

A lot of people slept on Doctor Sleep , and without any context, that sounds like a good thing. But it’s not. The sequel to The Shining expanded the Stephen King universe beyond what Stanley Kubrick brought to the screen in 1980. Ewan McGregor starred as the now-grown Danny, who is still coming to terms with his traumatic childhood and psychic powers after that catastrophic ending which turned his dad Jack (Jack Nicholson) into a glorified ice pop.

While Doctor Sleep wasn’t a blockbuster hit (why would a horror film hit theaters in November after everyone is all spooked out?!), the movie has received more favorable reviews in the years since. Probably because people are just now recognizing the genius of Rebecca Ferguson , or maybe it’s because two-plus hour movies have become the norm again.

This week, director Mike Flanagan reacted to The Hollywood Reporter ‘s list that ranked Doctor Sleep as one of the best sequels of the last 20 years. He seems vindicated.

On X, The Haunting of Hill House creator posted, “After a disappointing opening weekend at the box office, @StephenKing predicted time would be kind to DOCTOR SLEEP and I love that it continues to find and build its audience half a decade later. This movie is close to my heart.”

After a disappointing opening weekend at the box office, @StephenKing predicted time would be kind to DOCTOR SLEEP and I love that it continues to find and build its audience half a decade later. This movie is close to my heart. https://t.co/UzOxb7UgVT — Mike Flanagan (@flanaganfilm) July 7, 2024

Right before the film’s premiere in 2019, King was hard at work praising Flanagan and the film (while throwing a slight dig at Kubrick). “Mike Flanagan, I’ve enjoyed all his movies, and I’ve worked with him before on Gerald’s Game ,” he told EW . “So, I read the script very, very carefully and I said to myself, ‘Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here.'”

Flanagan and King are teaming up once again for another film, this time based on King’s novella The Life of Chuck , starring Tom Hiddleston.

Mike Flanagan Says Stephen King's Doctor Sleep Prediction Came True

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Despite being praised by critics, Doctor Sleep had a rough time grabbing attention during its theatrical run. However, the film's director, Mike Flanagan , never lost faith that the project would find its audience, due in large part to the support he received from iconic horror author, Stephen King .

Flanagan, the horror auteur behind popular horror television shows such as The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass , recently took to social media to reveal the prediction he received from Stephen King after Doctor Sleep didn't perform well at the box office. Flanagan linked an article from The Hollywood Reporter , that ranked the best movie sequels of the last 20 years and wrote the following via his X account : " After a disappointing opening weekend at the box office, Stephen King predicted time would be kind to DOCTOR SLEEP and I love that it continues to find and build its audience half a decade later. This movie is close to my heart ."

Doctor Sleep Star Addresses Plans for Scrapped Sequel

Doctor Sleep star Jocelin Donahue delves into the unexplored plot that would have made it into the sequel.

Doctor Sleep was both a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining , and an adaptation of King's novel that was published in 2013. Ewan McGregor starred as Danny Torrance, who is trying to make his way through adulthood, still traumatized by the events that took place in the Overlook Hotel. Despite trying to leave his past behind, Danny encounters a girl named Abra (Kyliegh Curran) who possesses the same power known as "the shine" , and joins her in the fight against the powerful and cunning, Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson). Doctor Sleep was received well by critics, but was a disappointment at the box office. The horror sequel only managed to bring in $31.6 million domestically, against a $45 million budget, with a worldwide total of $72.4 million. Flanagan had planned on making another sequel to The Shining , but plans were abandoned after the dismal box office performance of Doctor Sleep .

Mike Flanagan is Taking Over The Exorcist Franchise

Flanagan has become one of the leading voices in the horror genre. His work is often praised by critics and fans alike, which has paved the way for him to take over one of the most iconic franchises in horror, The Exorcist . Flanagan was never meant to be involved with Blumhouse's attempt to resurrect the franchise, but after The Exorcist: Believer was eviscerated by critics and failed the lofty expectations the studio had for the film, Flanagan was brought in as a course correction for the franchise.

THUMB Mike Flanagan's Comments on Netflix and Physical Media Go Viral

The Haunting of Hill House's Mike Flanagan Explains Why He Stopped Writing 'Bleak, Hopeless' Endings

The critically acclaimed director Mike Flanagan's vision for his projects' endings has shifted.

The Exorcist: Believer was meant to be the first of a trilogy, directed by David Gordon Green. Fresh off finishing his Halloween reboot trilogy, Green seemed poised to become the new go-to player in Hollywood when it came to horror franchises. However, the reaction to Believer was enough to scare off Blumhouse from continuing with the director, and a new vision for the franchise emerged. Flanagan's version will reportedly have no connection to Believer , and will be an original screenplay written by Flanagan. It was recently announced that Flanagan's Exorcist movie will hit theaters March 13, 2026.

Doctor Sleep

Years following the events of The Shining (1980), a now-adult Dan Torrance must protect a young girl with similar powers from a cult known as The True Knot, who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.

Mike Flanagan

Sleep review: A Korean Rosemary’s Baby? Not quite but this is a small masterpiece of tone

Is there something supernatural behind ominous unidentified noises in an apartment building.

If nothing else, this fine debut feature from Korean director Jason Yu – hitherto assistant director to Bong Joon-ho – counts as a small masterpiece of tone. It begins in the area of domestic comedy. A young couple worry over the husband’s erratic sleeping patterns while a downstairs neighbour frets about the noise above. Then suggestions of a supernatural cause build. We end in a state of deliciously escalating ambiguity. Such films hope audiences leave arguing about the meaning of what they have just seen, and I can confirm that such binary divisions are possible. My companion and I were politely at opposite ends of the argument. Sleep will certainly reward second and third viewing.

Set almost entirely within one apartment building, the picture makes a few good-natured gestures towards Rosemary’s Baby. Like John Cassavetes in that film, Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) is an actor struggling with indifferent work opportunities. Like Mia Farrow’s character, Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) is pregnant and, as the oddities gather, increasingly worried about the weird world into which the baby will be born. Those connections are, however, largely superficial. Sleep is lighter on its feet and more at home to rug-pulling humour.

Early on, while asleep, Hyun-su blurts out the words “Someone is inside”. Soo-jin hears noises elsewhere in the flat, but discovers nothing more sinister than a door banging in the wind. Her husband shows more signs of sleep disorder: he scratches his face violently; he sleepwalks to the fridge and wolfs down raw meat. We are eventually confronted with two explanations. A doctor sees this as an REM condition and recommends medication. Soo-jin’s mother calls in a psychic – a no-sense sort with little exotic mumbo jumbo – who decides that a spirit is present in the apartment. Could it be that of the jealous older man who used to live downstairs?

As we move into a third act, the peril has as much to do with Soo-jin’s growing paranoia as it does with any fears of a genuine haunting. Initially sceptical, she is soon convinced that supernatural perils lurk in every broom cupboard. We end with a hectic denouement that satisfies all desire for catharsis as it makes an art of creative doubt spreading. A fine chamber piece.

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke, a contributor to The Irish Times, is Chief Film Correspondent and a regular columnist

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COMMENTS

Doctor Sleep movie review & film summary (2019)
Flanagan and his team wisely don't choose to visually emulate "The Shining" for most of "Doctor Sleep," producing a film that looks a lot more like an episode of "Hill House" than the Kubrick original. The film has arguably too many close-ups and a bit too much of a cool gray/blue color palette, but these elements add to its eerie ...
Doctor Sleep
Struggling with alcoholism, Dan Torrance remains traumatized by the sinister events that occurred at the Overlook Hotel when he was a child. His hope for a peaceful existence soon becomes ...
Doctor Sleep
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2021. Luis Bond A Simple Vista. Doctor Sleep is a good psychological thriller with touches of terror, a bit of drama, and covered with a dreamlike ...
'Doctor Sleep' Review: A Duller 'Shining'
Ewan McGregor as the grown-up Dan Torrance in "Doctor Sleep," an adaptation of a Stephen King novel that revisits the characters of "The Shining." Jessica Miglio/Warner Bros.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Doctor Sleep: Directed by Mike Flanagan. With Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis. Years following the events of The Shining (1980), a now-adult Dan Torrance must protect a young girl with similar powers from a cult known as The True Knot, who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.
Film Review: 'Doctor Sleep'
Stephen King's 2013 sequel to 'The Shining' gets turned into a movie that's long and prosaic but also creepy and scary.
Doctor Sleep Review
Doctor Sleep. Warner Bros. Pictures Nov 8, 2019. 8.5. Review scoring. The scary and powerful Doctor Sleep works best when doing its own thing rather than recreating parts of The Shining. When it ...
'Doctor Sleep': Film Review
THR review: In 'Doctor Sleep,' Mike Flanagan's big-screen follow-up to 'The Shining,' Ewan McGregor stars as little Danny Torrance all grown up.
Doctor Sleep Works Best When It Stops Worrying and Forgets Stanley
Doctor Sleep is a horror movie, but what's immediately striking is its sudden breadth, it's humble resistance to the usual perils and thrills of blockbuster. It's refreshing.
Doctor Sleep Movie Review: The Shining Sequel
Doctor Sleep. Is a Horror Film of Messy Pleasures. By Angelica Jade Bastién, a New York and Vulture critic covering film and pop culture. Mike Flanagan's spiritual sequel to The Shining is ...
Doctor Sleep (2019 film)
Doctor Sleep is a 2019 American supernatural horror film written, directed, and edited by Mike Flanagan. It is an adaptation of the 2013 novel of the same name by Stephen King and sequel to Stanley Kubrick 's 1980 film The Shining. The film stars Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance, a man with psychic abilities and a drinking problem, who struggles with childhood trauma caused by the horrors at the ...
Doctor Sleep review: Ewan McGregor stars in The Shining sequel
'Doctor Sleep' is way too long, clashing somber sobriety with loony cheap thrills, and its homages to 'The Shining' turn shameless and cheap.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
8/10. Surprisingly, better than expected. Her-Excellency 4 November 2019. The ever-beautiful Rebecca Ferguson and a favorite from the Fargo series, Zahn McClarnon team up to bring us some somewhat scary, but more so eerie/creepy moments in this adaptation of King's Doctor Sleep. For the most part, and with the help of Ewan McGregor who plays an ...
Doctor Sleep Movie Review
Well-made "Shining" sequel has intense violence toward kids. Read Common Sense Media's Doctor Sleep review, age rating, and parents guide.
Doctor Sleep movie review: a reckoning with the ghosts of the past
A wonderfully unexpected sort of horror movie, beautiful and delicate, but unsettling, too, with an authentic plausibility to the dichotomy between the invented uncanny and the human response to it.
Doctor Sleep Review: Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson Shine in a
Doctor Sleep is a production of Intrepid Pictures and Vertigo entertainment with distribution by Warner Bros. Movie and TV Reviews doctor sleep (2019) The Shining (1980)
Doctor Sleep Review
Release Date: 23 Jan 2020. Original Title: Doctor Sleep. Perhaps it's apt that Doctor Sleep is a movie about dealing with the ghosts of the past, because it has a couple of doozies of its own to ...
Doctor Sleep Movie Review
Doctor Sleep rarely feels like an imitation of Kubrick, though, and the times when Flanagan does recreate key moments from The Shining are typically done from a fresh perspective - namely, Danny's - in service of the story being told here (save for the third act, but more on that later).
'Doctor Sleep' movie review: A gripping 'Shining' sequel
Heeeeeeere's Johnny…'s review of "Doctor Sleep." If you've ever sat up at night thinking, "What happened to Shelley Duvall and the creepy kid in 'The…
Doctor Sleep Director's Cut: 9 Key Differences From The ...
The three-hour version of Doctor Sleep is divided up into six sections with the inclusion of six title cards interspersed throughout the cut, with names "Old Ghosts," "Empty Devils ...
Review: Doctor Sleep
Doctor Sleep achieves two impossible feats: it's a worthy sequel to one of the most renown horror movies in cinematic history, and also offers one of the best representations of Christians in 2019.
Doctor Sleep Director Reveals Stephen King's Prophecy About ...
Five years ago Doctor Sleep was released and it failed to rock the box office. But Stephen King had always predicted the film would find love.
Mike Flanagan Reflects On To 1 Stephen King Prediction Coming True For
Horror director Mike Flanagan reflects on author Stephen King's prediction about his film Doctor Sleep, which recently proved itself to be true.
Stephen King's Prediction About 'Doctor Sleep' Came True
While 'Doctor Sleep' wasn't a blockbuster hit at the time, the movie has received more favorable reviews in the years since.
Mike Flanagan Says Stephen King's Doctor Sleep Prediction Came True
Mike Flanagan marvels at Stephen King's prediction about the Doctor Sleep movie coming true.
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Sleep review: A Korean Rosemary's Baby? Not quite but this is a small
Sleep review: A Korean Rosemary's Baby? Not quite but this is a small masterpiece of tone Is there something supernatural behind ominous unidentified noises in an apartment building?

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Reviewed at AMC 34th St., New York, Oct. 24, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 151 MIN.

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