Doctor Sleep adapted from Steven King’s novel of the same name is a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s classic film The Shinning. (Also adapted from a Steven King novel.) I have read the novel The Shinning a few times and found it to be one of King’s most effective horror stories and like King I was disappointed by Kubrick’s adaptation feeling that it missed the essential possession element of the work. I never got around to reading King’s sequel so I can’t speak to this film faithfulness as an adaptation.

With clever casting writer/Director Mike Flanagan picks up the story shortly after the events of The Shinning with Danny Torrance and his Mother Wendy living in Florida, both terribly scarred by the trauma that they have survived. The ghost of the hotel’s chief chef Hallorann visits Danny and helps him to master his psychic abilities.

Despite this when we catch up with Danny as an adult, he is a broken man and, like his father before him, suffering from bouts of rage and alcoholism.

Simultaneously A young girl, Abra Stone, is coming into her own as a psychic with her own special and power shine which brings her into the awareness of a cult of psychic vampires that feed of the essence released by tortured and murdered psychics lead by the sadistic Rose the Hat.

Very quickly Danny finds his path to sobriety and redemption runs straight through Abra and Rose, a path that leads all of them back to haunted Overlook Hotel.

Doctor Sleep is in fact my first experience with the work of Mike Flanagan, and I was quite impressed. The film has a simple yet deep production design that carries both a sense of real world reality while suggesting a deep unseen reality beyond just what is visible. Films about psychic abilities are always a tricky magic act to perform. By their very nature psychic talents are things of the mind and they do not generally lend themselves to effective visualizations. Flanagan manages to walk the narrow path of visual that are interesting and unreal while still not leaving the viewer lost or confused.

The cast is uniformly good, Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance always carries the haunted look of a man barely functioning despite the pain that clearly tormenting him. Kyleigh Curran as Abra has real talent and will be a treat to hopefully watch her blossom into an adult actor. that said for me the real treat was Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat. Having missed nearly all of the Mission Impossible franchise I was only recently introduced to her work in Dune Part 1as the Lady Jessica but her villainous turn as Rose is truly breathtaking. Playing a person of so little empathy is a very tough gig, overplay it and it ceases to be a character and dwindles into caricature underplay it and the threat begins to fade. Ferguson found the balance keeping her real, keeping Rose’s pain visible while maintaining the hardness that made her frightening.

Thew film’s climax at the Overlook was particularly satisfying especially for fans of the original novel.

Doctor Sleep is currently streaming on HBOMax and is available on VOD.