Doctor Sleep (2019)

Plot of Doctor Sleep: (Taking a deep breath) Remember the boy in The Shining, he was, and is Dan Torrance. We meet Torrance as a troubled adult, visited by spectres from the Overlook Hotel, and avoiding his own supernatural capabilities by alcohol. However, he is motivated to travel to New England where he meets Billy, who finds him accommodation and introduces him to AA. Now sober, he works in a hospice and uses his abilities (his shining) to give dying people peace. He is visited by the ghost of Dick Halloran formerly the head chef from the Overlook, who tells him how to capture the ghosts in psychic boxes. Meanwhile elsewhere a cult of vampires the True Knot prey on people with psychic capabilities, breathing in their ‘steam’ as they kill them. They are led by Rose the Hat and are on the track of Abra, a teen black girl who has super abilities. Psychically she contacts Dan by writing on the wall of his room and eventually they get together. They must combine their capabilities to take on the True Knot and set a trap for them in a forest where Dan, Billy and Abra’s dad shoot many of them but Rose the Hat is still out there, threatening both Abra and Dan.

Content:  No sex, but just a bit of nudity and initially a lot of drinking with associated violence. But moving on, Dan goes to AA meetings, and is at times tempted to drink, particularly in the Overlook by his father’s ghost behind the hotel bar. A theme in the film is of the psychics being able to create images of themselves in different places, and also transport others into different situations. Dan, Abra and Rose can do that. There is a gruesome scene of the True Knot killing a boy all the while breathing in his ‘steam’. Dan has flashbacks to his childhood when he cycled round the corridors of the Overlook, and is confronted by ghosts from the hotel. Including a naked aged woman in the bath.  Later, Abra, Rose and Dan meet for a final confrontation in the old and abandoned Overlook Hotel.

A View: I recollect hearing negative views about this film, so did not know what to expect, so was surprised at how good it was, and a bit unusually for a Stephen King offering, more or less keeping to the point. But apparently it did not make any money, said, by those who know, because actually most cinema goers today don’t care a damn about The Shining which was a hit in 1980. You’d have to be getting on a bit to have seen it in the cinema. But a terrific cast, particularly Rebecca Ferguson as the evil vampire. You wouldn’t want to meet her on a dark night. So give it a go, even if you don’t remember the first film.

Fun Fact: The director recreated the interior of the Overlook Hotel from blueprints provided by the Kubrick estate.