Doctor Sleep Review: This sequel to The Shining forgets that it's a horror movie

Doctor Sleep is based on Stephen King’s novel followup to The Shining, one of his most well-known horror stories. This movie is not just tied to the book, however - it’s also a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie classic, The Shining. Making a sequel to one of the most highly-regarded horror films of all time is a bold choice. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully pay off here. 

“Here’s Johnny!”

A long, long time ago, Jack Torrance took his family over to the infamous Overlook Hotel, to act as the hotel's caretaker while getting some writing done on the side. Innocent enough. However, that ended with him taking an axe to his family, killing the hotel’s cook and freezing to death outside a hedge maze. His wife and son survived his hellish descent into insanity, but his son came out of the whole experience with the Shining - a strange telepathic ability. 

That’s Kubrick’s The Shining in a paragraph, and pretty much all you need to know before watching Doctor Sleep. Doctor Sleep focuses on Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance, Jack’s son who isn’t doing so well in his adult years. The trauma he suffered as a child has led him to ignore and suppress his Shining ability as much as possible. 

However, when he encounters Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a child with even more powerful telepathic abilities, things rapidly go downhill again. Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her group of telepathic vampires, the True Knot, feed off the Shine of innocents. The True Knot become aware of Abra’s powers, and seek to kill her for her Shine.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Boy, this movie is a real mixed bag. On one hand, Doctor Sleep goes in an interesting direction by placing horror on the backburner and instead focusing on some decent character drama, which I actually really liked. The movie takes its sweet time to build up each and every one of its characters - making it that much more meaningful when they’re put in danger. 

Unfortunately, all the character drama just feels hollow when there’s just a huge lack of emotional payoff. We are taken through Dan’s entire life post-The Shining, but it rarely becomes important. Elements like his drinking and job as a hospital nurse come up frequently at the start, and then all too rarely by the end. Why spend so much time showing us his job at the hospital if it didn’t matter whatsoever to the story? Why focus on the drinking and then forget about it in the last hour? 

Mike Flanagan directed Doctor Sleep - and was the primary reason I was so excited to watch this. He has a fantastic way of making horror movies that deliver scares, while keeping the focus on the main cast. I mean, just watch Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Hush and even Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House. He knows how to mix horror with emotion, pulling us into these characters lives without sacrificing the suspense. That’s what makes this next part so disappointing. 

“Come play with us, Danny.”

This movie isn’t scary. Flanagan does a really good job with making certain scenes tense enough, but those scenes are few and far between. In fact, I’d go as far as to say this movie’s a little boring, which is the worst thing a horror movie can be. 

If this movie was a little shorter, maybe things would be different. Unfortunately, Doctor Sleep is two and a half hours long. Now, I have nothing against long movies, as long as the story is paced well. That just isn’t the case here. This film feels unnecessarily stretched out, with the first two acts lasting an ungodly amount of time. A good hour or so could’ve been cut out, and the pacing would have benefited greatly for it. 

“REDRUM!”

I’ve talked a lot about what I didn’t like about this movie, but I want to stress that it does have some redeeming bits. Acting is all around great, from Ewan McGregor’s turn as a traumatised, alcoholic Danny Torrance to Rebecca Ferguson as the villainous leader of the True Knot. Newcomer Kyliegh Curran is absolutely fantastic as Abra, continuing Flanagan’s tradition of casting really strong child actors. 

This film is also without a doubt one of the most creative horror films of the year, doing a lot of neat things with its cinematography that aren’t very common in the genre. The Shining ability is portrayed here in a different way than Kubrick’s film, with rotating houses and characters entering others’ minds, and it’s really interesting to see. Doctor Sleep’s colour grading is also just stunning, with only Midsommar rivalling it in terms of sheer beauty for a horror movie this year. 

There are points that heavily reference Kubrick’s The Shining as well, and they are frequent. You’ll see the creepy bathtub ghoul, the twins in the corridor, the shot of young Dan cycling through the Overlook Hotel and much, much more. Flanagan lovingly recreates all of these scenes, which should be a daunting task considering how iconic they are - but he pulls it all off perfectly. On a purely visual scale - this movie is breathtaking. 

Verdict

Doctor Sleep is a mixed bag. It takes far too long to build up to anything worth watching, and then has the gall to deliver a cheap, unsatisfying ending after it all. Mike Flanagan truly has a knack for exploring families with deeply troubled pasts in horror, but his efforts unfortunately fall flat here. This movie is simply far too long, taking a painful amount of time to get to the point. All that, and it’s not even scary.

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