10 Horror Movie Mysteries That Should NEVER Have Been Answered

By all accounts, Mike Flanagan's Shining sequel is a worthy successor to both Stanley Kubrick's psychological horror classic and Stephen King's book, but that doesn't mean it's without its fatal flaws.

Doctor Sleep picks up decades after the events of The Shining, and find Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) living out his adult life using alcohol to suppress his shining and drown his past. However, the road to recovery is short and paved with many fortuitous encounters, and Danny is soon using his gift to help the elderly pass over to the other side, earning his nickname Doctor Sleep.

Unfortunately, evil forces still exert their will on the world, and Danny must defeat the True Knot, a cult of nigh-immortal psychics who consume the lifeforce of those gifted with the shining. And, in the ensuing conflict, he returns to the Overlook Hotel to bury his demons for good.

While this is a decent plot for a successor to one of the most revered horror films of all time, it nonetheless stamps on sacred ground, as the riddle of the Overlook and its powers has kept fans guessing for some 40 years so far. The Shining's mystery is flattened to a basic house-of-horrors rather than a labyrinth for the psyche, and by having Danny fight the hotel as a singular, shine-sucking entity that manifests in the kooky cast of characters from the first film, any question of Indian burial grounds, cyclical violence or reincarnation go right out the bathroom window.