For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 28 prompt is Stephen King. We watched Doctor Sleep on Max.

Storyline

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless: mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death. Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.” Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival.—Stephen King

Our Thoughts on Doctor Sleep

I love this movie, maybe because I am a huge The Shining fan and have been a rabid reader of King since I was a kid. Danny Torrance (from “The Shining”) is a grownup alcoholic adult (Ewan McGregor) that has fought his demons along his life and used his abilities to lock them up in boxes in his brain. He joins an AA group, moves to another town and befriends Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis). Meanwhile a dangerous group of predator creatures led by Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) hunt down people that “shine” like Danny to feed with their steam and remain immortal. When Dan knows the powerful girl Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), he decides to protect her from the predators. “Doctor Sleep” is a dramatic fantasy film that uses the adult life of Danny Torrance from Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “The Shining” in a full of action story that slightly recalls “Near Dark”. Rebecca Ferguson and her costumes with the hat is gorgeous and stylish. If the viewer expects a sequel of “The Shining” of even a horror movie, he or she will be disappointed. My vote is seven.

8 out of 10

Trivia

Mike Flanagan painstakingly recreated the sets of the Overlook Hotel from blueprints acquired from Stanley Kubrick‘s estate. In the scene where hospital cat Azzie jumps on the desk in front of Dan, before he follows her to what should be an empty room, he puts down the magazine he was reading. It’s the same January 1978 issue of Playgirl Magazine his father, Jack Torrance, read in the lobby of The Overlook while waiting for Stuart Ullman and Bill Watson on Closing Day in The Shining (1980). Most elements from The Shining (1980) were recreated with duplicate sets and lookalike actors, though three shots were reused: the aerial shot of the water and the island and the two shots after it of the car driving on the mountain road. The shots were degrained, recolored as day-for-night, and had snow digitally added. Dr. John Dalton’s (Bruce Greenwood) room, in which Danny is interviewed for the orderly position, is identical to Stuart Ullman’s (Barry Nelson) office where Jack Torrance was interviewed for the caretaker job in The Shining (1980), right down to the paint color and the little American flag on the right side of the desk. Stephen King first got the idea for Doctor Sleep in 1998 at a book signing when somebody asked him what happened to Danny Torrance from his novel ‘The Shining’. This was a question King had often asked himself, as well as what would have happened to Jack Torrance had he found AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). When people kept repeating the question, King always jokingly replied that Danny eventually married Charlene McGee, the girl from Firestarter (1984). However, King eventually started thinking seriously about how old Danny was and what happened to Wendy and decided to find the answers with a sequel, but it was a tall order.