Doctor Sleep is a 2019 American supernatural horror film written, directed, and edited by Mike Flanagan. It is a film adaptation of the 2013 novel by Stephen King and serves as a sequel to The Shining (1980). 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 Overlook Hotel. Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, and Cliff Curtis have supporting roles as new characters: Abra Stone and Billy Freeman team up with Dan to take down Rose the Hat and her gang of followers.
Warner Bros. Pictures began developing a film adaptation shortly after Doctor Sleep was published in 2013. Writer-producer Akiva Goldsman wrote a script, but the studio did not secure a budget for the film until the box office success of its 2017 horror film It, also based on a novel by King. Flanagan was hired to rewrite Goldsman's script and direct the Doctor Sleep film. Flanagan said he wanted to reconcile the differences between The Shining novel and film. Filming began in September 2018 in Georgia, including Atlanta and the surrounding area, and concluded that December.
Doctor Sleep held its world premiere at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles on October 21, 2019, and was theatrically released worldwide on October 31, 2019, and in the United States on November 8. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised Flanagan's direction and screenplay, and the performances of the cast (especially McGregor, Ferguson, and Curran) but criticized its runtime. Grossing $72.4 million worldwide, its performance at the box office was a disappointment compared to the other King adaptations released in 2019: It Chapter Two and Pet Sematary.
Plot
After his family's ordeal at the Overlook Hotel, the traumatized Danny Torrance is followed by its ghostly inhabitants seeking his "shine". When Danny is 8 and after an incident with the ghost lady in his bathroom, Dick Hallorann teaches him how to capture them in psychic "lockboxes". In 2011, Dan has become an alcoholic to suppress his abilities. After moving to New Hampshire, Dan recovers through Alcoholics Anonymous. Working as a hospice orderly, Dan uses the shining to comfort dying patients, earning the nickname "Doctor Sleep". A young girl named Abra Stone, whose shine is even greater than Dan's, telepathically reaches out to him, and the two form a psychic friendship.
A separate plotline follows the True Knot, an old cult of psychic vampires led by Rose the Hat. They feed on "steam", a psychic essence released by torturing and killing people who possess the shining. By 2019, as the number of potential prey dwindles, the group has begun starving. They recruit teenage Andi, who has the power of suggestion, but their gruesome killing of a young baseball player traumatizes Abra, who alerts Dan. Rose, who senses Abra's clairvoyance, and later becomes connected to her while shopping, becomes intrigued. Rose infiltrates Abra's dream but is trapped by Abra, who proceeds to rummage through Rose's memory to learn about the cult. Convinced that Abra's immense powers will supply them with steam for years to come, Rose sends the True Knot members after her.
Abra divines the crime scene's location and meets Dan in New Hampshire to give him the information and implore him to help her stop the True Knot. Dan recruits his friend Billy and Abra's father, Dave, to help. They set up an ambush and kill most of the cult, but Billy is killed by Andi before she dies and Dave is killed by Rose's partner, Crow Daddy, who kidnaps Abra. Dan possesses Abra and causes Crow Daddy's car to crash, killing him.
Knowing Rose is coming for them, Dan brings Abra to the now-abandoned Overlook, which is equally dangerous for Rose. Dan sets the hotel's boiler to overload, while briefly confronting an apparition of his father and rejecting an offer to drink.
Rose arrives and overpowers Dan, but he releases the Overlook's occupants from his lockboxes. Drawn to Rose's power, the ghosts devour her before possessing Dan in a bid to make him kill Abra so they can feed on her steam. He goes to the boiler room and regains control before the hotel can make him deactivate it. As fire erupts, he sees a vision of himself as a child being comforted by his mother Wendy. Abra escapes as the Overlook burns down.
Sometime later, Abra speaks to Dan's spirit, who comforts her, telling her to "shine on". Abra tells her mother that Dan and Dave are okay. She then confronts an Overlook ghost and imprisons it in her psychic lockbox.
Cast
Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance, an alcoholic man with psychic powers known as "the shining". The character first appeared as his young self in the film The Shining. Roger Dale Floyd plays a young Danny Torrance (previously portrayed by Danny Lloyd) Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat, or "Rosie", the leader of the True Knot, a cult that feeds on people with psychic powers. Ferguson said she had difficulty filming the scene where the True Knot attacks a young child. Kyliegh Curran as Abra Stone, or "Abba-do", a girl with "the shining". Dakota Hickman plays a young Abra Stone. Carl Lumbly as Dick Hallorann, the late head chef of the Overlook Hotel who has "the shining". Scatman Crothers portrayed the role in The Shining. Zahn McClarnon as Crow Daddy, Rose the Hat's lover and right-hand man in the True Knot. Emily Alyn Lind as Snakebite Andi, a young member of the True Knot who is able to psychically control people. Bruce Greenwood as Dr. John Dalton, leader of Dan's AA group and his boss at the hospice. Jocelin Donahue as Lucy Stone, Abra's mother. Cliff Curtis as Billy Freeman, Dan's friend, coworker, and AA sponsor Robert Longstreet as Barry the Chink (Chunk)⅞ a member of the True Knot. Carel Struycken as Grandpa Flick, an aging member of the True Knot. Alex Essoe as Wendy Torrance, Dan's mother. Wendy was portrayed by Shelley Duvall in The Shining. Zackary Momoh as Dave Stone, Abra's father. Jacob Tremblay as Bradley Trevor, a victim of the True Knot, known to Abra as the "baseball boy". Henry Thomas as The Bartender, an apparition who calls himself Lloyd but resembles Dan's late father, Jack Torrance; Thomas thus also portrays Torrance briefly in flashback scenes. In The Shining, Torrance was portrayed by Jack Nicholson and Lloyd was portrayed by Joe Turkel. In the director's cut, Thomas additionally portrays the Hotel Caretaker with Torrance's likeness, who in the original film was portrayed by Philip Stone.
Additionally, Catherine Parker appears as Silent Sarey, Met Clark as Short Eddie, Selena Anduze as Apron Annie, and James Flanagan as Diesel Doug, all members of the True Knot cult. Violet McGraw portrays Violet, a child who is murdered at the start of the film by the True Knot cult and later fed to Snakebite Andi as part of her induction into the group, while Bethany Anne Lind portrays Violet's mother. Sadie and KK Heim portray the Grady sisters, with Kaitlyn McCormick and Molly Jackson providing their voices; the characters were originally played by twins Lisa and Louise Burns in The Shining. Sallye Hooks portrays Mrs. Massey, Michael Monks portrays Delbert Grady, and Hugh Maguire portrays Horace Derwent, respectively; played by Lia Beldam and Billie Gibson, Philip Stone, and Norman Gay in The Shining.
Themes Author Stephen King said he wrote Doctor Sleep because he wondered what Danny Torrance would be like as an adult. The film adaptation's director-writer-editor Mike Flanagan stated, "Danny is so traumatized by what he's been through, he has no idea how to deal with this," and McGregor added, "Dan Torrance's philosophy early on in the story is not to use the shining. He's drunk to suppress the horrible visitations, the spirits that are from the Overlook Hotel."
Flanagan described King's The Shining as "very much about addiction, which is doom. It's about annihilation and the destruction of a family," while Doctor Sleep was about "recovery," stating, "In the way that addiction feels like doom and annihilation, recovery is rebirth, and recovery is salvation, in a way." On themes, Flanagan has stated that "[Doctor Sleep] incorporates a lot of nostalgia from the first film... It also brings in themes that weren't in the first book, and focuses a lot more on the aspects of addiction and recovery."
The Daily Bruin noted that "many elements in the film – particularly during the climax when Rose, Dan and Abra converge in a "shine" to the death – reference recognizable characters and scenes from The Shining."
Connections to The Shining novel and film
King's The Shining was a 1980 film adaptation produced, co-written, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. King was critical of Kubrick's film to the point of writing and executive-producing a new adaptation with the 1997 television miniseries.
While the Doctor Sleep film is intended to be a direct adaptation of the 2013 sequel novel, Flanagan said the adaptation still "acknowledge[s] Kubrick's The Shining in some way". Flanagan said, "It is an adaptation of the novel Doctor Sleep, which is Stephen King's sequel to his novel, The Shining. But this also exists very much in the same cinematic universe that Kubrick established in his adaptation of The Shining." He explained working with all the sources, "Reconciling those three, at times very different, sources has been kind of the most challenging and thrilling part of this creatively for us." He first read the novel, and then had a conversation with King to work out adapting all the sources. As part of the process, Flanagan recreated scenes from The Shining to use in flashbacks. As did Kubrick with The Shining, Flanagan avoided the horror film trope of jump scares.
On why he wanted to present the film as a continuation of Kubrick's film, Flanagan expressed, "The Shining is so ubiquitous and has burned itself into the collective imagination of people who love cinema in a way that so few movies have. There's no other language to tell that story in. If you say 'Overlook Hotel,' I see something. It lives right up in my brain because of Stanley Kubrick. You can't pretend that isn't the case". King is famously known to dislike Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, particularly due to omitting several aspects of the novel that were personal to him, such as themes related to alcoholism and its role in the disintegration of family, which Flanagan read as "an examination of his fear of what his alcoholism could do to his family... and he wrote himself hope and sacrifice at the end. None of that is present in the Kubrick film... that was a bridge too far of a personal level for him." The opening of the Doctor Sleep novel was seen as King undoing and avoiding the changes Kubrick made to the Shining film.
During early talks, King's two stipulations for the Doctor Sleep adaptation was that the Overlook would not be present, and that the novel's ending would be retained. King initially rejected Flanagan's pitch of bringing back the Overlook as seen in Kubrick's film, but changed his mind after Flanagan pitched a scene within the hotel towards the end of the film that served as his reason to bring back the Overlook. Upon reading the script, King was so satisfied with the result that he said, "Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here."