Doctor Sleep

(MA15+) ★★★½

Director: Mike Flanagan.

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Carl Lumbly, Cliff Curtis, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Carel Struycken, Jocelin Donahue, Zackary Momoh, Jacob Tremblay, Bruce Greenwood, Alex Essoe.

The graffiti artist's handwriting was atrocious.

Following in the footsteps of Stanley Kubrick is a tough ask. Steven Spielberg pulled it off once, picking up the pieces of A.I. after Kubrick's death, but he's Steven Spielberg and there's not much he can't do.

Writer-director Flanagan is no Spielberg, but his balls must be big enough to roll after Indiana Jones in an ancient tomb. It takes some serious nerve to direct a sequel to Kubrick's The Shining AKA One Of The Greatest Films Of All Time. Not only that, but Flanagan is trying to marry together Stephen King's view of The Shining with Kubrick's (King famously hated Kubrick's film), all the while adapting King's novel Doctor Sleep.

It's a lot for anyone to take on - few films are burdened by such multi-layered expectation - so it's actually surprising how good Doctor Sleep is. It's not on the same level as Kubrick's psycho-horror thriller, but it's definitely in the upper echelons of King adaptations.

As with King's book, Doctor Sleep picks up the story of Danny Torrance not long after the events of The Shining, and finds the boy struggling to deal with what happened at The Overlook Hotel. A visit from the ghost of Dick Hallorann (Lumbly) gives Danny some coping mechanisms, and life goes on.

Skip forward 30 years and it seems Danny (now "Dan" and played by McGregor) isn't coping so well after all. He's an alcoholic, sleeping under a bridge, and hiding his "shining" powers from the world. But that's the least of his troubles - a group of evil soul vampires are roaming the countryside, draining the essence out of people who possess the shining ability.

These soul-suckers have their eyes on a young girl named Abra (Curran), whose shining powers outweigh even Dan's. Abra and Dan are going to have to work together to defeat Rose The Hat (Ferguson) and her squad of shine vampires.

Part of what made Kubrick's The Shining so great was that it was enigmatic. People have poured their puzzlings over its meanings, metaphors and mysteries into documentaries and PhDs. It's such a haunting film about hauntings because it offers no easy answers to its many ghostly and ghastly questions.

Doctor Sleep is far less mysterious. It goes out of its way in its first third to explain what went down at The Overlook Hotel. While part of this set-up is to make this sequel stand on its own two feet, it also feels like King reaching out from the pages to right the perceived wrongs of Kubrick's film.

It makes for a slow and occasionally redundant opening act, but once Doctor Sleep finds its rhythm, it's great. It doesn't feel like a Kubrick film - it's more of a King adaptation as opposed to a Kubrickian sequel. It definitely takes cues from the late great English director - there are no jump scares, plenty of travel sequences shot from overhead, and some of The Shining's signature camera moves (and even scenes) are repeated. But this is a far less psychological affair, and a far more King-ish horror.

It all requires an incredible balancing act between its triple-threat of source material, and writer/director Flanagan does a superb job. Doctor Sleep manages to be engrossing and unnerving, and boasts a pretty good ending for a King story. The presence of a strong cast certainly helps. McGregor is really good in the lead role, Curran is dynamite on debut as the gifted Abra, while Ferguson is disturbingly charismatic as Rose The Hat, as is Lind as her gang member Snakebite Andi.

Some of the throwbacks to The Shining feel a little gratuitous, and it does take a while to get going, but Doctor Sleep is far better than it has any right to be. Flanagan, who previously adapted King's supposedly unfilmable Gerald's Game, is definitely one to watch, whether he's tackling King or not.