10 Exact Moments Horror Movies Stop Trying

Who better than Mike Flanagan to helm a sequel to both the book and film versions of The Shining? That’s certainly what Stephen King thought, giving the Gerald’s Game director the chance to bring Doctor Sleep to the big screen and find a way to unite the disparate texts.

A carefully crafted picture about trauma brings Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) back from the brink to battle a new evil and face his metaphorical and literal demons. He meets Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a young girl with the shining, and helps protect her from Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and the True Knot, who stalk around the States finding supernaturally gifted children to suck the life out of.

Doctor Sleep is in turns harrowing, frightening, and profound, but the final act becomes something of a silly free-for-all. Returning to the derelict Overlook Hotel, Danny is reunited with the hotel’s spectres, now including his father, forcing him into a reckoning with his inherited alcoholism and trauma. We almost make it out unscathed, but Flanagan can’t help himself and takes liberties with the Overlook’s ghouls. Releasing them like Pokémon to fight Rose the Hat, he scotches his careful, balanced, and emotional conclusion in favour of a fanboy’s romp. And we can’t even blame King for this, because the book manages this section with minimal, tactful intervention from just a couple of ghosts.