Doctor Sleep is a Shining example of how to adapt a classic sequel, without losing any of the nostalgia – The Sun

THIS adaptation of Stephen Kings 2013 continuation of The Shining, while not actually being very scary, is still terrific nonetheless.

Ewan McGregor is Danny Torrance (the young son on the tricycle in The Shining) a hard-drinking man still suffering the effects of the traumatic events up at the Overlook Hotel all those years ago.

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He is struggling to keep the demons at bay and doing his best to remove himself from society.

But hes dragged back into the supernatural clutches when Abra a girl with the same telepathic gift he has (the waffly named shine) needs his help to escape from Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson).

Along with her band of pretty unmerry men, Rose needs to feed off the powers of these gifted people in her quest for immortality.

In order to fend these lot off, Danny must revisit the past figuratively and literally.

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Director Mike Flanagan had an unenviable task, adapting the sequel of a Stanley Kubrick classic, which was hated by its author. Yet he manages to navigate through this particular maze well.

Kubricks 1980 adaptation of The Shining famously veered off course from the source material, leaving this version of Doctor Sleep with no choice but to shoehorn in a lot of stuff that is missing from the book.

These constraints work in Flanagans favour allowing him to intelligently straddle nostalgia and modernisation.

Clever use of lookalikes and replica sets threw me straight back to the original.

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First up, its a relief to find Ewan McGregor on good form here. He can often go either way and this is a film solely reliant on its lead.

His lonely, recovering alcoholic is believable and the weary resignation as he accepts his fate works very well indeed. But the same cant quite be said for Rebecca Fergusons Rose The Hat.

She is a brilliant actress, but where we needed real malevolence and wickedness, we get camp Jack Sparrow theatrics. This is mainly down to the material.

The Shinings terror came from the unseen supernatural force building dread and fear in the viewer.

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Here we are spoonfed a baddie-chasing-goodie storyline, which made it feel too much like an episode of Preacher.

But its smart straddling of nostalgia is what saves and elevates Doctor Sleep.

As The Shinings greatest hits start getting wheeled out (all the favourites are there), youre reminded of just how creepy that damned hotel is.

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Tagging itself as a psychological thriller rather than a horror, its failure to properly get under your skin is a bit of a problem.

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This is largely due to the gap left by Jack Nicholsons truly malicious performance in The Shining. It also lacks the Eighties kitsch of the recent It reboots.

In spite of this, Doctor Sleep is a solid, entertaining follow-up to one of the scariest ever films.

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Doctor Sleep is a Shining example of how to adapt a classic sequel, without losing any of the nostalgia - The Sun

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