Doctor Sleep (2019)

“The kid with the Shining grew up, and now he’s got ghosts of his own.”


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🎥 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

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🧾 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

This is the sequel to The Shining — not the book’s sequel, not Kubrick’s sequel, but a weird hybrid that somehow respects both. Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is all grown up now, but he’s a mess: alcoholic, traumatized, and trying to outrun the ghosts in his head. Literally. He settles down, works at a hospital, and tries to live quietly… until a girl named Abra contacts him using the Shining. She needs help, because there’s a cult out there — led by Rose the Hat — who feeds on children with the Shining by torturing them and sucking out their life force. Yep, it’s every bit as unsettling as it sounds.


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👥 Character Rundown

Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) – Haunted, broken, but still trying to do better than his father. Watching him step into Jack’s shadow while fighting his own demons is powerful.

Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) – The kid with Shining powers who’s fearless, smart, and honestly way stronger than Danny ever was as a kid.

Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) – Villain of the year. Charismatic, terrifying, and utterly cruel. That child-murder scene? Brutal.

Crow Daddy (Zahn McClarnon) – Rose’s right-hand man, calm and collected, but still ruthless.

The True Knot – A cult of psychic vampires in RVs, roaming around feeding on children like it’s their gas money.



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⏱️ Pacing / Episode Flow

This is a long one — two and a half hours — and you feel it sometimes. But the pacing shifts: first act is Danny hitting rock bottom, second act is introducing Abra and the True Knot, and the third act is pure fan service with the return to the Overlook Hotel. The build-up pays off because when the ghosts come back, it’s iconic.


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✅ Pros

Ewan McGregor gives Danny depth and humanity — broken but still redeemable.

Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat is terrifying and magnetic.

The film nails the balance between Shining fan service and its own story.

Opening 15 minutes with recast Wendy & Danny = handled perfectly. No CGI de-aging crap, just good casting.

The Overlook finale ties Kubrick’s film back to King’s book in a way that actually works.

The music callbacks? Chef’s kiss.



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❌ Cons

The movie is long and slow in parts.

The child death scene is stomach-turning (and yeah, that’s the point).

If you only loved The Shining for the psychological tension, this leans way more into paranormal fantasy.



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💭 Final Thoughts

This movie had no right to be this good. A sequel to The Shining could’ve gone horribly wrong, but instead it gave us something that respects Kubrick and King. It’s scary when it wants to be, emotional when it needs to be, and the fan service is just the right amount — REDRUM on the wall, Danny in the bar mirroring his father, the blood elevator, the twins, all of it. And the ending? Danny goes out the way Jack did in the book, blowing up the boiler and destroying the hotel. It fixes Kubrick’s ending and finally gives closure.


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⭐ Rating

10/10. Slow in spots, but unforgettable. A sequel done right.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning

Alright, let’s talk about Rose the Hat, child murder, and the Overlook nostalgia overload.


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🩸 Spoilers

The True Knot roams the country in RVs, hunting down kids with the Shining. Rose lures them, ties them down, and the group literally tortures them while inhaling their “steam.” The baseball boy’s death scene lasts over two minutes, and it’s one of the hardest things to watch in a modern horror film.

Danny tries to stay low but Abra finds him telepathically. She’s bold, powerful, and not afraid to stand up to Rose. Together they plot to take the cult down. Danny and his buddy ambush Rose’s men in the woods — it’s a bloodbath, but Crow Daddy gets away long enough to kidnap Abra and kill her dad. Danny saves her, but he knows Rose isn’t finished.

So he says there’s only one place strong enough to end this: the Overlook Hotel. They drive up at night.

The fan service kicks in perfectly. Danny walks the halls, turns on the lights, and we see the blood-flooding elevators again. He sits at the Gold Room bar, and instead of Lloyd the bartender, it’s his father’s ghost handing him a drink. It’s chilling.

The final showdown: Rose enters, smug and confident, until Danny unleashes the ghosts he’s locked away in his mind. The Grady twins, the bartender, the rotting woman from Room 237 — all swarm Rose and devour her until she’s nothing. But then the ghosts possess Danny. Just like his dad, he picks up the axe and chases Abra through the hotel.

In his last act of redemption, Danny fights back, goes to the boiler room, and lets the hotel burn with him inside. Abra escapes, Danny dies, and the Overlook is finally destroyed — just like in King’s book.