I honestly thought I would never want a sequel to The Shining, and I certainly never thought that a sequel could live up to the original. I’ve said on numerous occasions that The Shining is my all-time favorite horror movie, and so that’s obviously a high bar to set for a sequel. It’s one of those movies that I always considered to be sacred and untouchable, so I have to admit that I was really scared going into Doctor Sleep. There was also the problem of the book and movie versions of The Shining being very different, so the movie needed to balance this when adapting the book’s sequel into movie form. While I can’t necessarily speak to faithfulness to source material since I’ve never actually read either book, what I can say is that Doctor Sleep does an amazing job of delivering a follow-up to one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

I think a direct sequel to something like The Shining could never really be all that interesting, so the plot of Doctor Sleep was a smart choice. We follow the kid from The Shining, Danny Torrance, over 30 years after the events of the movie. He is now a full adult, but he’s had trouble coping with the tragedy of his childhood. As such, he tries to start a new life to help deal with his alcoholism, and he ends up turning things around for himself. His world is then turned upside-down when he begins to communicate with a little girl that has the gift of the shine. Danny discovers that this girl is being hunted by a group of beings that hunt down kids with the shine in order to prolong their own lives. Danny must help protect the girl from this group, and in the process confront some of his own demons from the past.

I can’t recall any other time I’ve felt this way about a sequel. Typically, when you have a sequel like this, especially one that’s made so long after the original (there is a 39 year gap between The Shining and Doctor Sleep), one of the things that you look for is for the sequel to retain the same feeling/tone of the original. Doctor Sleep rarely does this, and ends up feeling like a MUCH different movie than The Shining. And yet…surprisingly, this is actually what I loved most about it. It tells its own story, and that’s what makes it so special.

And you know, it kind of had to be its own thing, when I think about it. See, The Shining really focused on Jack Torrance as its main character, and Jack wasn’t the same sort of “magical” being that Danny was. So, The Shining really told the story of how an unhinged man could wind up going crazy to the point where he’d try to kill his own family. However, Danny is gifted with a weird sort of power, and so if you’re going to shift focus and have him as the main character, you kind of need a bit more of a supernatural element to the story, which is what Doctor Sleep does. It dives much more into the mythology and rules behind the shine, and it does so in an interesting way. Doctor Sleep takes on this mission very seriously, and the result is a movie that feels much more fantasy/sci-fi than the original.

Speaking of this, there is one thing I have to give huge props to Doctor Sleep for. I normally do not like supernatural cult stories in pretty much any movie. I find them to be highly uninteresting, and usually unnecessarily convoluted. However, Doctor Sleep’s antagonists are genuinely interesting, and we never get too bogged down with the details behind who they are or why they’re doing what they’re doing. They are just a group that wants to live longer, so they continually hunt down and kill kids. That’s all we really need to know, and they pose such a high threat to the characters because of this that the tension is amazing. Only two or three of the members of the group are actually developed characters too, which I think was a smart choice. I didn’t need to know more about the rest of them for them to be a threat. The main ones are given the most attention, and they are compelling enough characters to want to keep watching. I think where this group benefits the most is in its enigmatic lead, Rose the Hat, who is portrayed with an amazing performance by Rebecca Ferguson. She is such an interesting character, and I thought she made for a fantastic protagonist.

I spent a lot of time discussing individual elements of the movie with my girlfriend, which made me realize that there’s a whole lot I could say about the movie, to the point where I could write many pages on it if I wanted to. I want to keep this semi-succinct, though, so I’m just going to throw out a few other random thoughts here. I want to say that Ewan McGregor delivers an amazing performance as Danny. The music of the movie is just as eerie as you would expect, without needing to rely on only playing the same tracks from The Shining. It makes subtle use of heartbeat-like noises that really add to the tension. The movie is a lot scarier than you would expect, and has some crazy imagery. There are flashback scenes that use different actors, and while none of them really looked super similar to their counterparts, it really isn’t as jarring as you would think, and winds up working for the intentions that it’s going for. The movie’s third act is where it feels most like The Shining, as it has Danny literally and figuratively confront his demons, and while this is a bit of a shift in tone that’s the most fan-servicey the movie gets, it was still highly effective. I loved it for the direction it headed in, and thought that it earned when it did by telling a fresh story for the rest of the movie, when the movie could have easily just tried to be the third act for the whole runtime. There is also a surprisingly incredible story being told here about alcoholism and repeating the sins of your father, and this helps give the movie some real depth beyond its scary, mystical elements.

Like I said, I could go on, but that about wraps up most of what I’m feeling. I’m not going to act like Doctor Sleep is nearly the same level of quality of a “classic” as The Shining (despite the fact that I’m giving them both perfect scores), but I never expected a sequel to my favorite horror movie of all time to be THIS GOOD. It was bold in its decision to tell a completely different story, and ultimately I feel like it pays off in spades. This is absolutely the best I could have ever hoped for from a sequel to The Shining, and if you’re as much of a fan as I am then I think you definitely need to check this out. I haven’t been this satisfied with a sequel in a very long time. While I wouldn’t want to watch this back-to-back with The Shining considering how different they are, Doctor Sleep is a movie that I actually just want to keep rewatching. There’s so much to love here, and I think it deserves all of the praise I can possibly give it.

5/5