Anyone who loves movies likely holds The Shining, one of Jack Nicholson’s best movies ever, in high regard. It’s one of the most important horror movies ever made, and it’s also a movie that was quite loosely adapted from its source material, a novel by Stephen King. The author has never been quiet about his dislike for the movie adaptation in spite of its popularity, and even wrote a sequel called Doctor Sleep that expanded on his version of the story.
That novel eventually made its way to movie theaters, and it wasn’t exactly a box office phenomenon. Before it leaves Amazon Prime Video at the end of the month, though, here are three reasons you should make time for it (the director’s cut is particularly excellent).
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It manages a careful balancing act
Doctor Sleep is set decades after the events of The Shining, and it follows Danny, the child from that story, as an adult. After battling and overcoming alcoholism, Danny finds himself living a quiet life in New England until he develops a psychic connection with a young girl who shines even brighter than he does. As she finds herself hunted by people who want to use her, Danny springs back into action to save her.
That plot description allows the movie to serve as both a fairly faithful adaptation of King’s novel and as a sequel to a movie that he despised. When we finally return to the Overlook Hotel, it’s just as menacing as it was all those years ago.
Rebecca Ferguson gets a chance to shine
Ewan McGregor’s central performance is key to what makes Doctor Sleep work, but the movie soars because of the decision to cast Rebecca Ferguson (currently seen in season 2 of the Apple TV+ sci-fi series Silo) as the film’s villain. Few actors alive are more capable of chewing scenery than she is, and as Rose the Hat, an ancient woman who steals the shine of others to extend her own life, she gets to do plenty of that.
Good actors can sell great, realistic scenes, but only great actors can put on a hat and sell you on the fact that they’re an ancient witch who has lived for millennia, and that’s exactly what Ferguson is able to do here.
It’s thrilling in different ways than The Shining
The Shining is an exercise an menace and terror, and it’s really the story of one man slowly losing his mind. Doctor Sleep has a fundamentally different project in mind, and tells what is really a much more conventional story.
While there are moments of horror here, Doctor Sleep feels a little bit more like a horror/action movie than a pure horror movie, and that’s ultimately to its credit. Instead of doing what The Shining did, only worse, Doctor Sleep does something totally different.
Doctor Sleep is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.