Doctor Sleep Review

I don’t want to go too far into detail in the spoilers section for Doctor Sleep because I don’t want to do a disservice to the craft of film making that this movie features. Instead I’ll break it down into what I liked and didn’t like about the movie. Be forewarned, this is still spoilers!

The Callbacks to The Shining

There were so many visual callbacks to The Shining hidden in plain sight in Doctor Sleep that I couldn’t keep them all straight. The movie starts with a flying shot similar to the iconic opening shot of The Shining and it also recreates that same opening shot as they approach the Overlook Hotel at the end of Doctor Sleep.

Dr. John Dalton, the man who employed Danny when he got sober, has an office that looks exactly like Ullman’s office in The Shining.

Danny Lloyd, the kid who played the original Danny, has a cameo during the baseball scene.

The first hospital room that Danny walks into when he finds his gift of sending dying people off into death is 217. Room 217 is the room that Timberline Lodge (the location used for panoramic shots of the Overlook Hotel) changed to 237 for the original movie.

All of these and so much more. They recreated so many scenes and so many sets from The Shining, and it all plays so well. I really had a lot of nostalgia while watching Doctor Sleep, and it wasn’t the cheap, easy to create kind – it was the earned kind.

The True Knot is Seriously Messed Up

As far as bad guys go, The True Knot is unassuming and impressive. They look like normal people and act a bit like gypsies, traveling around the country in a caravan of motorhomes and trucks, looking for their next meal.

When we learn what The True Knot does to get their next meal, my stomach turned. They find little kids who have the shining, and they brutally torture them with the intent of causing as much pain and suffering as possible. Pain and suffering in those with the shining causes the release of “steam,” which is what The True Knot feeds on. Finally, they kill these children and eat up what’s left of the steam.

There is a scene where they kidnap a small boy and torture him, and it was almost unbearable for me to watch.

The Shining as a Super Power

It was hard to tell exactly what “the shining” was in the original movie. I could tell that there was something about Danny, but it wasn’t fully fleshed out, and it left quite a bit to the imagination. Doctor Sleep doesn’t smack you in the face with a heavy handed description of what the shining is, but it does show you that there are a lot of different flavors of it. It also has enough characters with the shining for you to begin to realize that it’s basically a superpower.

People with an affinity for flowers. People who can make others do whatever they say. People who can read the future. People who can see ghosts. You get it. Just like superheroes, each person shines at different brightnesses. Some have more power, some have less.

At no point was it ever said that this was a superpower movie. It just is. That’s confidence in the product on the part of the studio and the creators, and I like it.

The Sound

There is a deep, bassy heartbeat and some pretty great string music throughout that seems to cover 85% of this movie, and it kept me wrapped up in the cocoon of this story quite nicely.

The Casting

Goddamn! I do mean, WOW! Everyone is so well cast that this movie had no choice but to be great. Ewin McGregor has hints of Jack Nicolson in his face. All the actors they cast to re-shoot the scenes from The Shining were dead-on both in looks and in mannerisms – it was great.

The Story

I feel like it’s been forever since I saw a story on the big screen that was new (to me) and was also well done. Doctor Sleep kept me enthralled from beginning to end, and I love it for that. I would even go to see this a second time, which almost never happens.