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What Is Doctor Sleep About?
Doctor Sleep is set over 30 years after the events of The Shining. Danny Torrance grows up to be a troubled man (played by Ewan McGregor), still haunted (literally) by the ravenous spirits of the Overlook Hotel. Danny’s slide into alcoholism (like his father before him) leads to a dark tragedy that sends him running away to start a new life; he even manages to make a few new friends, including a young girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), whose “shine” may be even brighter than Danny’s ever was.
The problem is, Abra’s shine is so bright that it attracts dark things – hungry things that feed on the shine of others. A particularly old and powerful dark creature called “Rose the Hat” (Rebecca Ferguson) eventually picks up Abra’s scent, forcing Danny to call upon his own powers after so many years, to protect his young friend from becoming food.
Why Doctor Sleep Deserves Way More Love
Doctor Sleep only made $72.4 million at the box office (on a budget of $45-55 million) when it was released in theaters back in 2019. But then, a nearly three-hour R-rated movie (over three hours, in the Director’s Cut) wasn’t the biggest sell for theatergoers; moreover, at the time, there wasn’t any sort of precedent for the combination of factors that were coming together to make Doctor Sleep a truly great horror epic.
The film was written and directed by Mike Flanagan, who would go on soon after to have a big breakout success with his Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Midnight Mass. However, it was Doctor Sleep that proved Flanagan was a horror visionary able to take on large-scale projects, make them frightening, but also inject them with deeper heart and subtext. The Shining sequel also showcased Flanagan’s ability to spin old horror lore back up into modern stories of a prestige level.
For years, there was a massive rift between Stephen King’s book The Shining and Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation, which King unabashedly disliked. Flanagan was handed the task of cracking a sequel story that bridged the continuities of King’s original book, the Kubrick film, and King’s sequel book – and he nailed all three. From the amalgamated plot beats and lore, to a third act that pays serious homage to Kubrick’s vision, Doctor Sleep arguably carries more water for the franchise than any other sequel ever has.
