Danny’s return to the Overlook gets stuck between worlds.

Horror sequels are a funny thing. While many horror films feel fated to live a life of sequel purgatory as every last drop of blood is drained from a franchise, there are those chosen few who manage to make it out unscathed.

As one of the finest examples of self-contained horror perfection, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was, for a long stretch of time, a true survivor of the sequel trend. Despite some loose ends and plot ambiguities, when we left Jack Torrance frozen in the snow of the Overlook garden maze, that was that.

Sure, there have always been conspiracy theories floating around but these were generally no more than flights of fancy or fanfiction. The Shining was just one of those singular cinematic moments that never needed expanding on. Well, that was until its creator thought otherwise.

With his famous distaste for Kubrick’s adaptation surely burning deep within him, Stephen King saw an opportunity to expand on The Shining’s story, even if few others did. And when the King of Horror himself says there’s mileage left in a tale, who the hell are we to argue?

Still baring the scars from his traumatic time at the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) has fought hard to find some degree of peace. Despite efforts to suppress his ‘shining’ abilities and live a normal life, things come to a head when he crosses paths with Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a fearless teenager with powerful extrasensory gifts of her own. As they’re hunted down by the merciless Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the ‘shine’ of innocents, the pair must team up for a brutal life-or-death battle that will force Danny to call upon old powers and face his deepest, darkest fears.

Any sequel that puts itself out there will have its work cut out finding the balance between being its own thing and channelling just enough of its predecessor to keep everyone satisfied. It’s a tricky job whichever way you slice it, but when you consider the fact that you’re following up something as seismic as The Shining, and doing so almost four decades later, the pressure is very much on.

To its credit, Doctor Sleep tries hard to be its own film, spending a decent portion of its lengthy running time investing heavily in Stephen King’s lore while keeping The Shining at arm’s length. Unfortunately, despite its best intentions, the film buckles under the pressure as it eventually opens the elevator doors to let loose a tidal wave of unnecessary call-backs and references.

Despite a flashback opening, for its first two acts, Doctor Sleep is a competent adaptation of King’s 2013 novel that wisely keeps itself apart from Stanley Kubrick’s film. It’s a solid start that promises much, yet, as we enter the third act and the film becomes completely unable to resist the nefarious pull of the Overlook, Doctor Sleep rapidly descends into what can only be described as a Shining rehash.

With often painfully diligent reverence to Kubrick’s film, director Mike Flanagan ensures Doctor Sleep’s famous lineage is worn like a badge of honour in a finale that makes damn sure you know exactly what world you’re in. It’s an awkward tonal shift that’s jarring to say the least and makes Doctor Sleep feel like two separate entities vying for our attention – one selling us something new and original, and the other happy to ride by on a wave of nostalgia.

This third act shift feeds into a wider structural issue with Doctor Sleep that leaves the film appearing weirdly paced and often downright clumsy. With multiple time jumps and awkwardly introduced characters, Doctor Sleep feels rather uneven throughout as it attempts to condense King’s mammoth 531-page novel into (an only slightly less mammoth) two and a half hours.

Key characters like Abra are introduced and then promptly side-lined for just long enough to have you forgetting who she is, while only a handful of The True Knot members are given anything approaching character development. The result is a particularly confusing pace and an uneven tone that never really allows the material to shine.

Disjointed though much of it may be, when Doctor Sleep does get into its groove, it shows just what its capable of. Coming off the back of his exemplary work on The Haunting of Hill House, Mike Flanagan channels the Netflix series’ nuanced characterisation and visual ingenuity to evoke a distinctive atmosphere that’s both utterly unique and irrevocably connected to the wider Stephen King universe.

In particular, Flanagan’s visual representation of how ‘shining’ operates is inventive and impressively fantastical. With creative camerawork and surrealist visual effects, these powers come to life like we’ve never seen before as Rose, Abra, and Danny all take turns to enter one another’s heads. It’s a level of flair that sets Doctor Sleep apart and manages to breathe life into the film even as its inconsistency’s threaten to drain it completely.

While it never touches The Shining in terms of pure psychological horror, Flanagan certainly knows how to build an effectively eerie atmosphere while mixing in one or two genuinely shocking moments that go to places even its predecessor couldn’t/wouldn’t. In particular, one scene-stealing cameo from Jacob Tremblay quickly descends into something downright horrific, sending a gut-punch of terror shooting through the rest of the film.

It’s in this single moment of sickening horror that Doctor Sleep finally steps it up a notch, increasing both the stakes and the threat levels just enough to keep things interesting. It’s also in this moment that we truly witness the full extent of Rose the Hat’s unquenchable thirst for immortality as Rebecca Ferguson’s character rapidly grows into one of King’s more interesting antagonists.

While Ewan McGregor is his usual solid self and there’s a certain spiky charm about Kyliegh Curran’s Abra, it’s Ferguson that steals the show as the behatted antagonist. In a role that’s equal parts pure evil and mesmerising bohemian glamour, Rose the Hat is simultaneously sensual and sinister in a manner that’s difficult to pull off convincingly. Although Rose isn’t the most well-rounded villain you’ll ever come across, it’s in the power of Ferguson’s captivating performance that she rises above the character’s problems to take things to the next level.

As it mines Danny Torrance’s deeply entrenched PTSD, where Doctor Sleep finds a lot of its success is in its exploration the kind of childhood-rooted trauma that feels utterly unique to Stephen King’s brand of storytelling. Like his approach to generational trauma in The Haunting of Hill House, Flanagan stays true to the King’s novel as he dives into Danny’s familial pain and lost childhood in a way that feels both heartfelt and genuinely touching.

Although the indulgences of film’s finale do their best to undermine things, Doctor Sleep is often a heart-breaking look at a man haunted by the spectre of death his entire life and his journey back from its grip. While the execution can be erratic and far too heavy-handed at times, the film’s themes of pain, mortality, redemption, and an adolescence lost come through exceptionally.

The Shining is one hell of an act to follow and while Doctor Sleep can’t touch the horror mastery of its predecessor, it does a solid job of expanding on the lore. Caught between being its own thing, staying true to Stephen King’s original vision, and wanting to make its connections to Kubrick’s 1980 classic explicit, Doctor Sleep feels like a collection of entirely distinct films that struggle to meld with one another. By wanting to please both King and Kubrick fans, the film falls somewhere in between and while there are certainly many elements that mark Doctor Sleep out from the horror sequel crowd, it never quite fulfils its potential.