Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep tries to do two jobs at once: sequel to The Shining and adaptation of Stephen King’s 2013 novel. The film runs 152 minutes, and that length is the problem. It carries the Overlook’s ghosts and a whole new mythology, the True Knot, and never quite settles on which one it trusts.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Dan Torrance and the Lockboxes
Ewan McGregor plays Dan, still scarred by the Overlook. As a boy, Dick Hallorann taught him to trap the hotel’s ghosts in psychic “lockboxes.” By 2011 Dan is an alcoholic, drinking to smother his shine. He lands in New Hampshire, gets sober through Alcoholics Anonymous, and takes a hospice job where he comforts the dying. That earns him the nickname Doctor Sleep. It is the film’s best idea, and Flanagan gives it room to breathe.
Then Abra Stone arrives. Kyliegh Curran plays the teen whose shine outmatches Dan’s. She reaches him telepathically, and the two build a psychic friendship. Meanwhile Rose the Hat, played by Rebecca Ferguson, leads the True Knot, a cult of psychic vampires that feeds on “steam,” the essence released by torturing and killing people who shine. By 2019 the prey is scarce and the cult is starving.
Rose the Hat and the Baseball Boy
The True Knot’s killing of a young baseball player, Bradley Trevor, is the hinge. Abra feels it, alerts Dan, and Rose senses Abra’s clairvoyance in return. Rose slips into Abra’s dream and gets trapped, and Abra rifles through her memory to learn the cult’s secrets. Convinced Abra’s power could feed them for years, Rose sends her followers after the girl.
Flanagan’s cast does the work. Ferguson is the standout, and Zahn McClarnon’s Crow Daddy and Emily Alyn Lind’s Snakebite Andi give the cult real menace. Cliff Curtis is warm as Billy Freeman, Dan’s friend and AA sponsor. Carl Lumbly takes over Dick Hallorann from Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd, who played young Danny in the 1980 film, cameos as a spectator at Bradley Trevor’s baseball game.
What the Overlook Costs
Here is the trouble. Flanagan said he wanted to reconcile the differences between King’s Shining novel and the 1980 film, and that ambition is visible in every frame. But reconciliation is not drama. The film keeps stopping to explain its own continuity, and the middle stretch sags under the weight of it.
The horror beats land. The True Knot’s violence is genuinely upsetting, and Ferguson’s performance makes starvation look like appetite. But the film is too long and too reverent, more museum tour than haunting.
Where It Leaves Dan
Doctor Sleep is a serious, well-acted film that mistakes fidelity for feeling. It honors two versions of the same story and never finds its own pulse. Worth watching for Ferguson and for the hospice scenes, which are the only parts that feel alive.
Key facts:
– Release: October 31, 2019 (worldwide); November 8, 2019 (US)
– Runtime: 152 minutes
– Director/writer: Mike Flanagan
– Score: 5.9 of 10
The story’s order of events:
1. Dan traps the Overlook’s ghosts in psychic lockboxes as a boy
2. Dan drinks to smother his shine, then gets sober in New Hampshire
3. Rose the Hat’s True Knot kills the baseball boy
4. Rose sends her followers after Abra
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